During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar Maori household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, fighting, bragging dominant benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and pride. But back at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and energy. He created a bold, sincere film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could apply this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir 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 Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the low point, of his American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the heir from assassination or kidnapping: this was a forceful, engaging movie which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
