During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: the actor is the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and verve. He crafted a bold, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply this energy and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers 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 gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, 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 American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also his body double, used to protect the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped typical double tropes. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
