In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class indigenous family in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. A son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and energy. He created a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could apply this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of his American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
Following this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, watchable film which sidestepped the usual double cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
