In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class Maori household in Auckland's south: the actor plays the drinking, brawling, bragging dominant benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son receives tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and energy. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of his American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the heir from attack or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable movie which sidestepped the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
