During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: the actor plays the boozing, fighting, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who could see how he could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when the 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 decent thriller, and he earned again directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the heir from assassination or abduction: this was a punchy, watchable movie which sidestepped typical double tropes. In subsequent times, he returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
