During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: the actor is the drinking, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided typical double cliches. And in later years, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
