During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class indigenous family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and verve. He created a bold, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of his American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and as well as his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
