The Director's First Film Once Were Warriors Revealed a Director of Courage and Style
During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori household in Auckland's south: the actor is the drinking, brawling, boasting dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could bring this energy and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer he wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of his American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, the director discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the heir from attack or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable film which sidestepped the usual double tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
