In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar indigenous family in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously 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 suspense film, and he had another payday directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging movie which sidestepped the usual doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
