During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a bold, sincere film with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances 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 filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of his American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a forceful, engaging movie which sidestepped the usual double tropes. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
