During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class indigenous household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, brawling, boasting dominant benefit recipient Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and verve. He created a bold, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring this energy and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson 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 suspense film, and he earned again directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
But the high point, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and also his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: it was a forceful, engaging movie which avoided typical doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
