During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori family in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, fighting, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and energy. He crafted a bold, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism 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 the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously 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 thriller, and he earned again directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
After this, the director found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a punchy, engaging movie which avoided the usual double tropes. And in later years, he returned to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
