In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply this energy and talent 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 the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote humorously 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 second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, the director discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a punchy, watchable movie which avoided typical double tropes. And in later years, he went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
