During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. A son gets gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and energy. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could bring this energy and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of his Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, the director discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a forceful, engaging film which avoided typical double tropes. In subsequent times, he returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
