In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking 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 Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son receives tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of his American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; 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
After this, the director found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and also his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging movie which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
