In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son gets tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, 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 film gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he earned again filming 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 his American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided the usual double tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
