In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made 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 indigenous family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging dominant benefit recipient Jake, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who could see how he could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
Stateside, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, 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 their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer he wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing 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, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Comeback
Following this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and as well as his body double, used to protect the heir from attack or abduction: it was a forceful, engaging film which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
