During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class indigenous 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 weak followers to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he earned again directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the low point, of his Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, the director discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the heir from attack or kidnapping: it was a punchy, engaging film which avoided the usual double cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
