During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class indigenous family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. One son gets tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, 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 their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of his 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 the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and as well as his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a punchy, watchable film which avoided the usual double tropes. In subsequent times, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
