In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, boasting dominant welfare claimant Jake, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, 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 crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. A son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains 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 people once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and energy. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who could see how he could apply this energy and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, the director found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a punchy, watchable film which sidestepped the usual double tropes. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
