During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar indigenous family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and verve. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director made 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 the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer he wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career 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 – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to recall 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 the dictator's hideous son the character and also his body double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging movie which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he went back to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
