During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, brawling, boasting dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son receives tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and energy. He created a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son the character and also his body double, used to protect the heir from attack or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable film which sidestepped typical doppelganger tropes. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
