In 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered 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 are a blue-collar indigenous family in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a bold, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he had another payday 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 Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable film which avoided typical doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
