The Director's First Film Once Were Warriors Revealed a Filmmaker of Guts and Flair
In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar Maori household in Auckland's south: the actor is the drinking, brawling, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. A son receives tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”
Raw Emotion and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery 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 two men who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when its producer he 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 serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.
Bond Film and Professional Changes
But the high point, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.
Later Work and Comeback
Following this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and also his body double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: this was a punchy, watchable movie which avoided typical double cliches. And in later years, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
