In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class indigenous household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, brawling, bragging dominant benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply this energy and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book 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 Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of his American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, the director discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped the usual double cliches. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
