During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar indigenous family in South Auckland: the actor plays the boozing, brawling, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring this energy and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made 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 the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again directing the sequel 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 Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, engaging movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
