During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar indigenous household in South Auckland: the actor is the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant welfare claimant Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, 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 the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who recognized how he could apply this energy and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting 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 directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and as well as his body double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable movie which sidestepped the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
