During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori household in Auckland's south: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home 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 is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son receives tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor 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.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of his American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, the director found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, engaging film which sidestepped typical doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
