In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar indigenous family in Auckland's south: the actor plays the drinking, brawling, bragging dominant welfare claimant the father, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he earned again filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, engaging film which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
