During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori household in Auckland's south: the actor plays the drinking, brawling, bragging dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also his body double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a forceful, engaging movie which sidestepped the usual double tropes. In subsequent times, he returned to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
