During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a bold, sincere picture with a very 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could apply this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops 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 a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer he 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 had another payday filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need 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 discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or kidnapping: it was a forceful, engaging film which sidestepped typical double cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
