During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and energy. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who could see how he could bring that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a punchy, watchable film which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. And in later years, he returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
