In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar indigenous family in Auckland's south: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and energy. He created a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer he wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with a trained bear 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 triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of his American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
Following this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the heir from attack or abduction: this was a forceful, engaging film which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
