During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar indigenous household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, fighting, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son receives tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; 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 the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of his American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable film which avoided typical doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
