During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar Maori family in Auckland's south: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could bring this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir 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 Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the heir from attack or abduction: it was a punchy, watchable movie which avoided typical doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
