During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar indigenous family in Auckland's south: the actor is the boozing, brawling, boasting dominant welfare claimant the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing 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 critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of his American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
After this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the heir from attack or kidnapping: it was a punchy, watchable movie which sidestepped the usual double cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
