During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class indigenous household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son receives tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a bold, sincere picture with a very 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film mocked 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 where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a punchy, watchable movie which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
