During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: the actor plays the boozing, fighting, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the ways 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 despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and verve. He crafted a bold, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could apply this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, 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 Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer he 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 earned again directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of his Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, the director discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable film which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
