During 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 drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar indigenous family in Auckland's south: the actor plays the boozing, fighting, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and verve. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori directed 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 the actor and his co-star as characters who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: this was a forceful, engaging movie which sidestepped the usual doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
