During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class indigenous household in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son receives tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and energy. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who could see how he could apply that dynamism 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 Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production 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 XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also his body double, employed to protect the heir from attack or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable film which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
