During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar indigenous household in South Auckland: the actor plays the boozing, brawling, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and energy. He crafted a bold, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could apply this energy and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
Following this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a punchy, watchable film which avoided the usual double tropes. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
