During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori family in Auckland's south: the actor plays the boozing, brawling, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and verve. He created a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could bring this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (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 decent thriller, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and as well as his body double, used to protect the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging movie which avoided the usual double tropes. And in later years, he went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
