Lee Tamahori's First Film Once Were Warriors Showcased a Filmmaker of Courage and Style
During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori family in South Auckland: the actor plays the boozing, fighting, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, 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 traditional weapon – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and verve. He crafted a bold, heartfelt film with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances 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 earned again directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of his Hollywood career was directing 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 – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
After this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the heir from attack or abduction: this was a forceful, engaging movie which sidestepped typical double cliches. And in later years, he returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
