During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar indigenous household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, 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 taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and energy. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could apply this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer he wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he earned again directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
After 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 hideous son Uday and also his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: it was a punchy, watchable film which sidestepped the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing 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 masterpiece.
