During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could apply that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, 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 the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable film which sidestepped typical double cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
