During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar Maori family in Auckland's south: the actor is the drinking, brawling, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and crime, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who recognized how he could apply that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he earned again directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, the director found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a forceful, watchable film which sidestepped typical double tropes. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
