During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class indigenous household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when its producer he wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, the director found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and as well as his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: it was a punchy, engaging film which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he went back to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
