🔗 Share this article

In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, boasting dominant benefit recipient Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”

Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.

American Films and Diverse Work

In America, the director directed the noir thriller 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 characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer he wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.

Bond Film and Professional Changes

Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of his Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film 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 an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.

Subsequent Projects and Return

After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and as well as his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a punchy, engaging movie which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned 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 director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.