During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar indigenous family in South Auckland: the actor plays the boozing, brawling, bragging dominant benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a bold, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who could see how he could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
Following this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable movie which sidestepped the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
