In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of that era, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class indigenous family in South Auckland: the actor is the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant welfare claimant the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and energy. He crafted a bold, heartfelt picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and also his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: this was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped the usual double tropes. And in later years, he went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
