In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class indigenous family in South Auckland: the actor plays the boozing, brawling, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, 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 the girl, who has talent as a writer. A son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and pride. But back at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth 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 unleashed with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who could see how he could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
American Films and Diverse Work
In America, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when its producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he earned again filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of his American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, the director discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: it was a forceful, engaging film which sidestepped the usual doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
