Lee Tamahori's First Film Once Were Warriors Showcased a Director of Courage and Style

During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”

Raw Emotion and Confident Direction

Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and energy. He created a bold, heartfelt picture with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.

Hollywood Career 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 Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor 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 triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.

Bond Film and Professional Changes

Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.

Later Work and Return

After this, the director found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped the usual double cliches. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.