In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar indigenous household in South Auckland: the actor is the drinking, fighting, 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 is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is taken 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 dignity and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he had another payday filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the heir from attack or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging film which avoided the usual double tropes. And in later years, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
