During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class Maori household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, brawling, boasting dominant benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. One son gets tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and energy. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
But the high point, or perhaps the low point, of his Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
After this, the director found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and also his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging movie which sidestepped the usual double tropes. In subsequent times, he went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
