In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar indigenous household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, brawling, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played 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 illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. One son receives tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka 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 Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously 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 thriller, and he earned again filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of his American work was taking on 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 – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a forceful, engaging film which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
