In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: the actor is the drinking, brawling, bragging dominant benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son receives tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a bold, sincere film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer he 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 earned again directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, the director discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, watchable movie which avoided typical doppelganger tropes. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
