During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of that era, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: the actor plays the boozing, brawling, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, 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 sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when its producer Art Linson 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 decent suspense film, and he earned again directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, watchable movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
