During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class indigenous family in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant welfare claimant the father, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, 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 the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and energy. He created a bold, sincere film with a very 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when its producer he wrote amusingly 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 filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
After this, the director discovered renewed creativity. His 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 attack or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
