During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, heartfelt picture with a very 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who could see how he could bring this energy and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming 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 triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, the director discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also his body double, employed to shield the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging film which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
