In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar indigenous household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother 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 unleashed with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and energy. He created a bold, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
After this, the director found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a forceful, engaging movie which avoided typical double tropes. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
