In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar Maori family in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer he 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 thriller, and he earned again directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and also his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a punchy, engaging movie which sidestepped the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
