During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class indigenous family in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, brawling, boasting dominant benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. A son receives tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who could see how he could bring this energy and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, the director made 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 film became a cult favorite when its producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the heir from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, engaging film which avoided typical double cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
