In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar indigenous family in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, brawling, boasting dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and verve. He created a bold, sincere film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could bring this energy and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, 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 the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, the director found 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 as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the heir from attack or kidnapping: this was a punchy, watchable movie which avoided typical doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
