During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, brawling, boasting dominant welfare claimant the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and verve. He created a bold, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who recognized how he could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
But the high point, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the heir from attack or kidnapping: it was a punchy, watchable film which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
