During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and energy. He crafted 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 Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer he wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances 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 second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and also his body double, used to shield the heir from assassination or kidnapping: this was a forceful, engaging movie which sidestepped typical double cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
