In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori family in South Auckland: the actor is the drinking, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip 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 succeeded with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – 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, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son the character and as well as his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, watchable film which avoided typical doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
