In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class indigenous family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant benefit recipient Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and verve. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori directed 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 journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of his American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also his body double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable film which sidestepped the usual double tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
