During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, bragging dominant benefit recipient Jake, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
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 confidence and energy. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could bring this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he earned again directing 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 Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son the character and as well as his body double, employed to shield the heir from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable film which avoided the usual double cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
