During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar indigenous family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son receives tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and verve. He crafted a bold, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could apply this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly 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 earned again filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of his Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, the director found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable film which sidestepped the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
