Lee Tamahori's First Film The Warriors Revealed a Director of Guts and Flair

During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar indigenous household in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and assault 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 gang life and crime, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”

Emotional Violence and Confident Direction

Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, sincere picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could apply this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.

Hollywood Career and Varied Projects

Stateside, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.

Bond Film and Professional Changes

But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.

Later Work and Return

After this, the director found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided typical double tropes. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.