During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of that era, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar indigenous household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son receives tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile 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 ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
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 crafted a gutsy, heartfelt film with a very 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, 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 worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, the director discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and also his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a punchy, watchable movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
