During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of that era, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class indigenous family in South Auckland: the actor plays the boozing, fighting, boasting dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. One son receives tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who recognized how he could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite 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 serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or kidnapping: it was a forceful, engaging movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
