During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and energy. He created a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring this energy and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer he wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
But the high point, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and also his body double, used to protect the heir from attack or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped the usual double tropes. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
