During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class indigenous family in Auckland's south: the actor is the boozing, fighting, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – 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 despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip 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 energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a punchy, watchable movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
