🔗 Share this article

In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class indigenous household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. A son receives tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”

Raw Emotion and Confident Direction

Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a bold, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.

Hollywood Career and Varied Projects

In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when its producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.

007 Movie and Professional Changes

But the high point, or perhaps the low point, of his American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.

Later Work and Return

Following this, the director found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable film which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.