During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: the actor plays the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and energy. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a forceful, engaging film which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
