During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: the actor is the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. A son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and verve. He crafted a bold, heartfelt picture with a very 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could bring this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday filming 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 Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, the director discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, he returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
