During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori household in Auckland's south: the actor is the boozing, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets 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 traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and energy. He crafted a bold, heartfelt picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring this energy and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he earned again directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son the character and also his body double, employed to shield the heir from attack or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped typical double cliches. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
