During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: the actor is the drinking, brawling, boasting dominant benefit recipient Jake, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and energy. He created a gutsy, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring this energy and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer he wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: it was a punchy, engaging movie which avoided the usual double cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
