In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar indigenous family in Auckland's south: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could apply this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori directed 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 two men who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer he wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of his Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
After this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: it was a forceful, engaging movie which sidestepped the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
