During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar Maori household in Auckland's south: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son gets tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and verve. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
In America, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the heir from attack or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging film which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
