During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class indigenous family in South Auckland: the actor is the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son receives tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and verve. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. 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 mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son the character and as well as his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, watchable movie which sidestepped the usual doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
