In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: the actor is the drinking, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people 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 landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and energy. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its 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 sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of his American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also his body double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
