In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of that era, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and energy. He created a bold, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status 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 earned again filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of his American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a punchy, engaging movie which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
