During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class indigenous household in Auckland's south: the actor plays the boozing, fighting, bragging dominant benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”
Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He crafted a bold, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.
Hollywood Career and Diverse Work
Stateside, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Career Shifts
But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of his Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
After this, the director discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: it was a forceful, engaging film which sidestepped the usual double tropes. And in later years, he returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.
