In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class indigenous household in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, 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, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and energy. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming 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 second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in the series – 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.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, the director discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: it was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped typical doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
