During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class Maori household in Auckland's south: the actor is the boozing, brawling, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who could see how he could bring that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, the director made 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 Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he earned again filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of his Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
After this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable film which avoided typical double cliches. And in later years, he returned to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
