In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, fighting, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who could see how he could bring this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori directed the dark mystery 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 characters who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite 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 decent thriller, and he earned again filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of his American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, the director found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
