The Director's First Film Once Were Warriors Revealed a Director of Courage and Style

In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault 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 gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. One son receives tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”

Emotional Violence and Confident Direction

Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.

Hollywood Career and Varied Projects

In America, the director 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 trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again filming 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 Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.

Subsequent Projects and Return

After this, the director found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also his body double, used to protect the heir from attack or kidnapping: this was a forceful, engaging film which sidestepped the usual double tropes. In subsequent times, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.