During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori household in Auckland's south: the actor is the drinking, brawling, boasting dominant welfare claimant the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and energy. He created a bold, sincere picture with a very 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director directed the noir thriller 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 their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the low point, of his Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a punchy, engaging movie which sidestepped the usual doppelganger tropes. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
