During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: the actor plays the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could bring this energy and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status 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 decent suspense film, and he earned again filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of his Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and as well as his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a forceful, engaging film which sidestepped the usual double tropes. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
