In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered 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 are a blue-collar indigenous family in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, 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 Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and verve. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, the director found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and as well as his body double, employed to shield the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable film which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
