During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori family in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is partly 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 a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and energy. He crafted a bold, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could bring this energy and talent to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins 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 humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he had another payday filming the second 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 taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son the character and also his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable movie which sidestepped typical double cliches. And in later years, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
