In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming 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 directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of his Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also his body double, employed to shield the heir from attack or kidnapping: it was a punchy, engaging film which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
