In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar indigenous household in South Auckland: the actor plays the boozing, brawling, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this 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 bold, sincere film with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he had another payday filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
But the high point, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the heir from assassination or abduction: this was a punchy, engaging movie which sidestepped the usual double tropes. And in later years, he returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
