In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. A son gets tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a bold, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who recognized how he could bring this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori directed 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 two men who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer he wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of his American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, the director found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable film which avoided the usual double tropes. And in later years, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
