In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, brawling, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. One son gets tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and energy. He created a bold, sincere film with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer he wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor 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 XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of his American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son Uday and as well as his body double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable film which sidestepped typical double tropes. And in later years, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
