During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, fighting, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. One son gets tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, heartfelt film with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who could see how he could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a punchy, engaging film which avoided typical double cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
