During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of that era, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: the actor is the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, 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, including his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller 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 the producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming 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 filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a forceful, engaging film which sidestepped the usual 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 his partner. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
