During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class indigenous household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. A son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and energy. He created a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, 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 his Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also his body double, employed to protect the heir from attack or abduction: it was a punchy, watchable film which avoided the usual double tropes. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
