The Director's Debut Once Were Warriors Revealed a Director of Guts and Flair
During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, brawling, bragging dominant welfare claimant the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. One son gets tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and energy. He crafted a bold, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of his Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
Following this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son Uday and as well as his body double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, engaging film which sidestepped the usual double tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
