In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class indigenous household in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, brawling, bragging dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors 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 unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and energy. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of his American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a forceful, engaging movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating 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 masterpiece.
