During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar indigenous household in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, fighting, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who comes home 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 future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. A son receives tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply this energy and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of his American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also his body double, employed to shield the heir from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, watchable film which sidestepped typical doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, he returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
