In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: the actor is the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent 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 his Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
