During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class indigenous household in Auckland's south: the actor plays the boozing, brawling, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. A son gets gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and energy. He created a bold, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who could see how he could apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he earned again filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of his Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: this was a punchy, watchable movie which avoided typical double tropes. And in later years, he returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
