In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – 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”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, 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 his co-star as characters who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and also his body double, employed to protect the heir from attack or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
