In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori household in Auckland's south: the actor is the boozing, fighting, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously 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 suspense film, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of his American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging movie which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he went back to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
