During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, brawling, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A 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 gains dignity and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who could see how he could bring that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson 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 thriller, 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 nadir, of his Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, Tamahori found 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, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, watchable film which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
