During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori household in Auckland's south: the actor is the boozing, fighting, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. A son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes 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 recognized how he could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori 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 their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday filming the second 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 American work was directing the Bond movie 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. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and as well as his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a punchy, watchable film which sidestepped typical double cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.