During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: the actor is the drinking, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. A son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and verve. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer he wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he had another payday filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of his American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son Uday and as well as his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a forceful, engaging film which sidestepped typical double cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
