During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar indigenous household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging dominant benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and energy. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who could see how he could bring this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, the director discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable film which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
