In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori family in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, fighting, bragging dominant benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.
American Films and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of his American work 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 the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Later Work and Return
Following this, the director found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and as well as his body double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, engaging film which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, he went back to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
