During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class indigenous family in Auckland's south: the actor is the boozing, fighting, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. One son receives tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka 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”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors 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 such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and verve. He created a bold, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son the character and also his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: this was a forceful, engaging movie which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he returned to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
