🔗 Share this article

During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: the actor plays the boozing, fighting, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets 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 taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”

Emotional Violence and Confident Direction

Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and energy. He crafted a bold, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.

American Films and Diverse Work

Stateside, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when its producer he wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.

007 Movie and Professional Changes

But the high point, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.

Later Work and Return

After this, the director discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the heir from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped typical double cliches. In subsequent times, he went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.