In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar Maori household in Auckland's south: the actor plays the boozing, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. A son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and energy. He created a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could apply this energy and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances 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
But the high point, or perhaps the low point, of his American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son the character and also his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a punchy, watchable film which sidestepped the usual double cliches. And in later years, he returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
