During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori household in Auckland's south: the actor plays the drinking, brawling, boasting dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He crafted a bold, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production 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 directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
But the high point, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: this was a punchy, watchable movie which avoided the usual double tropes. And in later years, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
