During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class indigenous household in South Auckland: the actor is the drinking, fighting, bragging dominant benefit recipient Jake, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. One son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and verve. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously 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 suspense film, and he earned again filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of his American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging movie which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
