During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar indigenous family in Auckland's south: the actor is the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and crime, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and energy. He crafted a bold, heartfelt film with a very 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could bring this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, the director discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the heir from attack or kidnapping: it was a punchy, engaging movie which sidestepped typical double tropes. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
