In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar indigenous household in Auckland's south: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant benefit recipient Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and crime, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son receives tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and energy. He created a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who could see how he could bring that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
After this, the director discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: it was a punchy, watchable movie which sidestepped the usual doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
