In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of that era, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, 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 the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when its 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 decent suspense film, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, 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 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 recall its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the heir from assassination or abduction: this was a punchy, watchable film which sidestepped the usual doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
