In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class Maori household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson 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 serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of his Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, the director found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son the character and also his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging movie which avoided the usual double tropes. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
