In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar indigenous household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, fighting, boasting 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 shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and verve. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a very 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 Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer he wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of his Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a forceful, engaging movie which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
