During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar indigenous household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and energy. He crafted a bold, sincere picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he earned again directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the low point, of his American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son the character and as well as his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a forceful, engaging movie which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
