During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, brawling, bragging dominant benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing 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 – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could bring this energy and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of his American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Return
Following this, the director found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and as well as his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable film which avoided the usual double cliches. And in later years, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
