In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: the actor plays the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and energy. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging film which avoided typical double cliches. And in later years, he went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
