In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori household in Auckland's south: the actor plays the boozing, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and verve. He created a bold, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who could see how he could apply this energy and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite 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 suspense film, and he had another payday directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, the director found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son the character and also his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
