In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and verve. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply this energy and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
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 worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also his body double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, watchable film which avoided the usual double tropes. In subsequent times, he went back to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
