During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, fighting, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. A son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and energy. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who recognized how he could apply this energy and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director made the noir thriller 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 two men who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of his American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also his body double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, watchable film which avoided the usual double tropes. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.