In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, bragging dominant benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who could see how he could bring this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer he 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 earned again directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of his American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and as well as his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable movie which sidestepped typical double tropes. In subsequent times, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
