During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar indigenous family in Auckland's south: the actor is the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant welfare claimant the father, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and verve. He created a bold, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who could see how he could bring this energy and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise 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 installment derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and as well as his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging movie which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
