In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. One son receives tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and energy. He created a bold, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could bring this energy and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of his Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
After this, the director discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped the usual double cliches. And in later years, he returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
