🔗 Share this article

During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class indigenous household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. A son receives gang tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is at least 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 Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”

Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and verve. He created a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who could see how he could apply this energy and talent to commercial projects.

Hollywood Career and Varied Projects

In America, the director directed the noir thriller 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 two men who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote humorously about the turbulent production 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

Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of his American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.

Subsequent Projects and Comeback

Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and also his body double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or abduction: this was a punchy, engaging movie which sidestepped the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.