During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son receives tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and energy. He crafted a bold, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could apply this energy and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, the director found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also his body double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: this was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped the usual double cliches. In subsequent times, he went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
