During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging dominant benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. A son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and verve. He crafted a bold, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly 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 second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of his Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, the director found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and also his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable film which sidestepped typical doppelganger tropes. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
