During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar indigenous household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting 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 directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also his body double, used to protect the heir from attack or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable film which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
