In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant welfare claimant the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and energy. He created a bold, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama 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 Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming 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 filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of his Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the heir from attack or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable movie which sidestepped the usual doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, he went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
