During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori family in Auckland's south: the actor plays the boozing, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of his Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging movie which avoided the usual double tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
