During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar indigenous family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son receives gang tattoos; another 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, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and energy. He crafted a bold, heartfelt picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin 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 a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; 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? This car which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and also his body double, used to shield the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided typical doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
