In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: the actor plays the drinking, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting 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 directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, the director found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also his body double, employed to protect the heir from attack or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
