During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of that era, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and verve. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of his American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, the director found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the heir from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable movie which sidestepped the usual doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
