During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son receives tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its 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 decent suspense film, and he earned again filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of his American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
