During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of that era, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and energy. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could bring that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson 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 decent thriller, 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 nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also his body double, employed to protect the heir from attack or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable film which avoided the usual double cliches. And in later years, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
