In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. A son gets tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
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, heartfelt film with a very 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director 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 Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly 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 earned again filming 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 Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: it was a forceful, watchable movie which sidestepped typical double cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
