In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, fighting, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, 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 Grace, who has talent as a writer. One son receives tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – 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 Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he earned again filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging movie which sidestepped the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
