During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class indigenous household in Auckland's south: the actor is the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work 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 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a forceful, engaging movie which sidestepped the usual double cliches. And in later years, he returned to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
