In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class indigenous household in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, brawling, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. 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. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, 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 delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and verve. He created a bold, heartfelt film with a very 90s touch 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 apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers 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 trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of his American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
Following this, the director found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and also his body double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable film which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.