During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class indigenous family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, 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 sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and energy. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could apply this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production 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 earned again directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
But the high point, or maybe the low point, of his American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, the director found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: this was a punchy, watchable movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
