In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. One son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and energy. He created a bold, heartfelt picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin 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 filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he earned again filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of his American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and as well as his body double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided typical doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
