In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of that era, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: the actor is the drinking, brawling, boasting dominant welfare claimant Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is at least 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, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this 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 bold, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book 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
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and as well as his body double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: this was a forceful, engaging movie which avoided the usual double cliches. In subsequent times, he went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
