In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: the actor is the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and energy. He created a bold, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming 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 triple-X franchise 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 Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, the director found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son the character and also his body double, employed to shield the heir from attack or kidnapping: it was a forceful, engaging movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger tropes. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
