During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, fighting, bragging dominant benefit recipient Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and pride. But back at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent 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 low point, 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 the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son Uday and as well as his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a forceful, engaging film which avoided typical doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
