In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori family in Auckland's south: the actor plays the boozing, fighting, boasting dominant welfare claimant Jake, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – 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”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and verve. He created a bold, sincere film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could apply that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins 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 humorously 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.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of his 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 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
