During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar indigenous family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and energy. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming 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 directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
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 Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, the director found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging film which avoided typical double cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating 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 greatest work.
