In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar indigenous family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and energy. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie 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 thriller, and he earned again filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and as well as his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging movie which sidestepped typical double tropes. And in later years, he went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
