During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar indigenous household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and verve. He crafted a bold, heartfelt film with a very 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, 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 their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of shooting 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 XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of his American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
Following this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a punchy, engaging movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, he went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
