During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of that era, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this 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 gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could apply this energy and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of shooting 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 XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the low point, of his Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, the director discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: it was a forceful, engaging film which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
