During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori family in South Auckland: the actor is the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a bold, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could apply this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted 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 gained cult status when the producer he wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and as well as his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a forceful, engaging film which avoided typical double tropes. And in later years, he returned to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
