During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and verve. He created a bold, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could bring this energy and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (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 decent thriller, and he had another payday filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie 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 the star; it was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and as well as his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a forceful, watchable film which sidestepped typical double cliches. And in later years, he returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
