During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, brawling, boasting dominant benefit recipient Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could apply this energy and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he had another payday directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment mocked 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 remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, the director found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son the character and also his body double, used to protect the heir from attack or kidnapping: it was a forceful, watchable movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
