During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar Maori household in Auckland's south: the actor plays the boozing, fighting, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and verve. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could apply this energy and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of his Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also his body double, employed to shield the heir from assassination or abduction: this was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped the usual doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, he returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
