In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar indigenous family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, fighting, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and verve. He crafted a bold, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring this energy and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie 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. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
Following this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: it was a punchy, engaging movie which sidestepped the usual doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
