During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, bragging dominant benefit recipient the father, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who could see how he could bring that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie 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 suspense film, and he earned again directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, the director found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, engaging film which sidestepped typical doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
