In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class indigenous household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and verve. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could bring this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori directed 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 two men who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the low point, of his American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, the director found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and also his body double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: it was a punchy, watchable movie which avoided typical double cliches. And in later years, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
