In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar indigenous household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and energy. He crafted a bold, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops 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 trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of his Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a forceful, engaging film which sidestepped typical double tropes. In subsequent times, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
