During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, brawling, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people 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 such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who could see how he could bring this energy and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, 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 the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey 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 an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
Following this, the director discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and as well as his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided typical doppelganger tropes. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
