During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar Maori family in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, fighting, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and energy. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable film which sidestepped the usual doppelganger cliches. And in later years, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
