In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a bold, sincere film with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could apply this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, the director directed 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 characters who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he earned again filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of his Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, the director discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the heir from assassination or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable film which sidestepped the usual doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
