During 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 represent a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, fighting, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention 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. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could bring this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of his American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable film which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. And in later years, he went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
