During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, fighting, boasting dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and energy. He created a bold, sincere film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
But the high point, or maybe the low point, of his Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, the director found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles 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 double tropes. And in later years, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
