During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar indigenous family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, brawling, bragging dominant benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed 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 sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and energy. He created a gutsy, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson 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 had another payday directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of his American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and as well as his body double, employed to shield the heir from attack or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable film which avoided typical doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, he returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
