During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply this energy and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also his body double, employed to shield the heir from attack or kidnapping: it was a punchy, engaging movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
