In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class indigenous household in Auckland's south: the actor plays the boozing, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. A son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and pride. But back at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and energy. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of his American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, the director discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the heir from attack or abduction: this was a punchy, engaging film which avoided typical doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
