During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist drama 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 drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and crime, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and verve. He created a bold, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could bring this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer he wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor 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 XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of his Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
Following this, the director discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a punchy, watchable film which sidestepped the usual double tropes. In subsequent times, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
