In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori family in South Auckland: the actor plays the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and verve. He crafted a bold, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he earned again filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and as well as his body double, employed to protect the heir from attack or kidnapping: this was a punchy, watchable film which sidestepped typical doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
