In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and energy. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who could see how he could apply this energy and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming 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 filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of his American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and as well as his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: this was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped typical double cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
