During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of that era, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. A son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and verve. He created a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer he wrote amusingly 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 had another payday directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the low point, of his American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
After this, the director discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the heir from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging film which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. And in later years, he returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.