In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar Maori household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and energy. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who recognized how he could apply this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances 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 filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of his Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, the director discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a punchy, engaging movie which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned 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 director – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
