In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori family in Auckland's south: the actor is the boozing, fighting, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, 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 sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and verve. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he earned again filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
After this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging 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 outstanding director – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
