During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son receives tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and energy. He created a bold, heartfelt picture with a very 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he earned again directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of his American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
After this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also his body double, employed to shield the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a forceful, engaging film which sidestepped the usual double cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
