In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of that era, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class indigenous household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and verve. He crafted a bold, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (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 thriller, and he earned again filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a punchy, watchable film which sidestepped the usual doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he went back to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
