During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of that era, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori household in Auckland's south: the actor is the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and energy. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly 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 earned again filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of his Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
After this, the director found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
