During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar indigenous family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, brawling, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who could see how he could apply this energy and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he earned again directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the low point, of his American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a punchy, watchable film which avoided the usual double tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori 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 debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
