In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar indigenous household in Auckland's south: the actor plays the boozing, fighting, boasting dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a bold, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he earned again filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of his Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the heir from attack or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided typical doppelganger tropes. And in later years, Tamahori 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 was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
