During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class indigenous household in South Auckland: the actor plays the boozing, brawling, bragging dominant benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who recognized how he could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, 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 Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
But the high point, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, the director discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, watchable film which avoided typical double cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
