In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and energy. He crafted a bold, heartfelt picture with a very 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the heir from attack or kidnapping: it was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he went back to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
