During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of that era, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class indigenous household in South Auckland: the actor is the drinking, brawling, bragging dominant benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and energy. He crafted a bold, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of his Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a forceful, watchable movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, he returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
