In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar indigenous family in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son receives tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could apply this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
Following this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided typical double cliches. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
