During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and energy. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment mocked for having the poorest device 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.
Later Work and Return
After this, the director found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son the character and also his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable film which sidestepped typical double tropes. And in later years, he returned to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
