In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class indigenous household in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, fighting, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son receives tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could apply this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of his Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and as well as his body double, employed to shield the heir from assassination or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
