In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, brawling, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted 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, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and energy. He created a bold, heartfelt picture with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director made the dark mystery 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 trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
But the high point, 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; this was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, the director found some more interesting form. 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 attack or kidnapping: it was a punchy, watchable film which sidestepped the usual doppelganger 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 filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
