In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar indigenous family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and crime, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and verve. He created a bold, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who recognized how he could apply this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of his Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
After this, the director discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable film which sidestepped the usual double cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
