In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class indigenous household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent 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 taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and self-respect. 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 people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who could see how he could bring that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of his Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget 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
After this, the director discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable film which sidestepped the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.