During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori household in Auckland's south: the actor is the drinking, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son receives tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who could see how he could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, 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 derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, the director found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, watchable movie which sidestepped the usual double tropes. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
