During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar Maori family in Auckland's south: the actor is the drinking, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. A son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and energy. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt film with a very 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could bring this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, the director 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 the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
But the high point, or maybe the low point, of his American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a forceful, engaging film which avoided typical double cliches. In subsequent times, he went back to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
