During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar Maori family in Auckland's south: the actor plays the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and verve. He created a bold, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote amusingly 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 earned again directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of his Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, watchable film which sidestepped typical doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, he went back to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
