In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori family in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a bold, heartfelt film with a very 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who recognized how he could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he earned again directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of his Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a punchy, watchable movie which sidestepped the usual double tropes. And in later years, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
