Lee Tamahori's Debut The Warriors Showcased a Director of Courage and Style

During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, fighting, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. One son receives tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”

Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.

Hollywood Career and Diverse Work

Stateside, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously 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 thriller, and he earned again directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.

Bond Film and Career Shifts

But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.

Later Work and Return

Following this, the director found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and as well as his body double, employed to shield the heir from assassination or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable film which sidestepped the usual doppelganger cliches. And in later years, he went back to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.