In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class indigenous household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. One son gets tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and energy. He crafted a bold, heartfelt picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of his American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the heir from assassination or kidnapping: it was a forceful, watchable film which avoided the usual double cliches. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
