During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: the actor is the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he earned again filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; 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 Comeback
After this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the heir from attack or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided the usual double cliches. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
