In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori household in Auckland's south: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates 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 gang life and crime, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son receives tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and energy. He created a gutsy, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir 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 Professional Changes
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of his Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, the director found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a punchy, watchable movie which sidestepped typical double tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
