During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: the actor is the drinking, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a bold, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting 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.
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; it was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging movie which sidestepped the usual doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
