During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class indigenous household in Auckland's south: the actor is the drinking, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
Following this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and also his body double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, engaging movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
