In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, fighting, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. One son gets tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a bold, sincere film with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could apply this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, 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 the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he earned again filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, the director discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable film which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
