In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: the actor plays the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent 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. A son receives tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could bring this energy and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite 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 serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, the director found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable film which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
