During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, brawling, boasting dominant benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and energy. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of his Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, the director discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable film which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he went back to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
