During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a very 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori directed 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 his co-star as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its 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 directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
Following this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and also his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable film which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
