In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother 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 …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and energy. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could bring this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made 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 Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, 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 Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: this was a punchy, watchable movie which avoided the usual double tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
