During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori household in Auckland's south: the actor plays the boozing, fighting, boasting dominant welfare claimant Jake, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched 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 unleashed with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and energy. He crafted a bold, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring this energy and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the low point, 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 poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
Following this, the director found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and as well as his body double, employed to shield the heir from attack or abduction: this was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped typical doppelganger tropes. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
