In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: the actor plays the drinking, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and energy. He created a bold, heartfelt film 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 the film industry who could see how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer he wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he earned again filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son Uday and as well as his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, engaging film which sidestepped typical doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, he returned to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
