In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar indigenous household in Auckland's south: the actor is the drinking, fighting, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and verve. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a very 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops 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 their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he earned again filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of his Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a forceful, watchable film which avoided the usual double tropes. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
