In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, 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 plays the drinking, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and energy. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who could see how he could bring that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of his American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, the director found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and as well as his body double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging movie which sidestepped the usual doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, he went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
