Lee Tamahori's First Film Once Were Warriors Showcased a Director of Guts and Flair
During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori household in Auckland's south: the actor is the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and verve. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 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 recognized how Tamahori could apply this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of his Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and also his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a punchy, engaging film which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, he went back 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 filmmaker – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
