During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar indigenous household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse 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 gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who recognized how he could bring this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he had another payday directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
After this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son Uday and as well as his body double, employed to shield the heir from attack or kidnapping: it was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided the usual double tropes. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
