During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class indigenous household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, boasting dominant welfare claimant Jake, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who could see how he could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer he wrote amusingly 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 suspense film, and he had another payday filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of his American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
Following this, the director discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and as well as his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging movie which sidestepped the usual double cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
