During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of that era, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar indigenous family in Auckland's south: the actor plays the boozing, fighting, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and energy. He crafted a bold, heartfelt picture with a very 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Diverse Work
Stateside, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of his Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and also his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging movie which sidestepped typical double tropes. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
