In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and energy. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the low point, of his American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, the director found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and as well as his body double, used to protect the heir from assassination or kidnapping: it was a punchy, watchable movie which avoided typical double tropes. In subsequent times, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
