During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar indigenous household in South Auckland: the actor plays the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could bring this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of his American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. 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, employed to protect the heir from attack or kidnapping: this was a punchy, watchable movie which avoided typical double tropes. And in later years, he returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
