During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate 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. One son receives gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter 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, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a bold, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could apply this energy and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops 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 journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a punchy, watchable movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, he returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
