During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant welfare claimant the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. One son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and energy. He crafted a bold, heartfelt picture with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops 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 the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, 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 installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered renewed creativity. The 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, employed to shield the heir from attack or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable movie which sidestepped typical double cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
