During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of that era, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar indigenous family in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, brawling, bragging dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. A son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and verve. He created a bold, heartfelt picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of his American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: this was a forceful, engaging movie which sidestepped typical double tropes. In subsequent times, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
