During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: the actor plays the boozing, fighting, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and energy. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who could see how he could apply this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer he wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he earned again directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this 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 recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
Following this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also his body double, employed to protect the heir from attack or kidnapping: it was a punchy, watchable movie which sidestepped typical double cliches. In subsequent times, he went back to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
