In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of that era, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son receives tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who could see how he could bring this energy and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of his American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, watchable movie which avoided typical doppelganger tropes. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
