🔗 Share this article

During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of that era, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: the actor is the drinking, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, 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 bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply this energy and talent to commercial projects.

Hollywood Career and Diverse Work

In America, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.

Bond Film and Career Shifts

But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.

Subsequent Projects and Return

After this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and also his body double, employed to shield the heir from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable film which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.