🔗 Share this article

In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, brawling, boasting dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers 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 drifted into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son gets tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”

Emotional Violence and Confident Direction

Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and verve. He created a bold, heartfelt picture with a very 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who could see how he could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.

American Films and Diverse Work

Stateside, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when its 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 decent thriller, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.

007 Movie and Professional Changes

But the high point, or maybe the low point, of his American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it 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 that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.

Later Work and Comeback

After this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable film which avoided typical double tropes. And in later years, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.