During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class indigenous family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, fighting, bragging dominant benefit recipient the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. One son gets tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and verve. He crafted a bold, sincere picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director 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 the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting 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 XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
After this, the director found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a punchy, watchable film which sidestepped the usual double tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
