During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of that era, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar indigenous household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. 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 the girl, who has talent as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and verve. He crafted a bold, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor 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 amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he earned again directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and also his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: it was a punchy, engaging film which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
