During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar indigenous family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this 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, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply this energy and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore 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 became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson 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 decent 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 American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, the director found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the heir from attack or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable movie which sidestepped typical double cliches. And in later years, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
