In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, brawling, boasting dominant welfare claimant Jake, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and energy. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring this energy and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who journey through the wilderness 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 droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
But the high point, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, the director found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
