During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of that era, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class indigenous family in South Auckland: the actor is the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he had another payday directing the second in the XXX series 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 Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, the director discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and also his body double, employed to protect the heir from attack or abduction: this was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped the usual double tropes. And in later years, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
