🔗 Share this article

During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class indigenous household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, fighting, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”

Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and energy. He created a bold, sincere film with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could bring this energy and flair to commercial projects.

Hollywood Career and Diverse Work

Stateside, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.

Bond Film and Professional Changes

But the high point, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.

Later Work and Comeback

Following this, the director discovered renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a punchy, watchable film which avoided the usual double tropes. And in later years, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.