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During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”

Raw Emotion and Confident Direction

Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and energy. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who could see how he could bring that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.

American Films and Diverse Work

Stateside, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote humorously 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 sequel in the XXX series 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 directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.

Subsequent Projects and Return

After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and as well as his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable film which sidestepped typical doppelganger 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 Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.