During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, brawling, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and energy. He created a bold, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who could see how he could bring this energy and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of his Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and as well as his body double, employed to shield the heir from assassination or kidnapping: it was a punchy, watchable movie which sidestepped the usual double tropes. And in later years, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
