In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar indigenous household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. A son receives gang tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and critics, 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
In America, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of his American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard 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 the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a punchy, watchable film which avoided the usual double cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
