During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, fighting, bragging dominant benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. A son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and verve. He crafted a bold, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer he 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 thriller, and he had another payday filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the heir from assassination or abduction: this was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped typical double tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
