🔗 Share this article

In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, fighting, bragging dominant benefit recipient Jake, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son receives tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”

Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and verve. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.

Hollywood Career and Varied Projects

Stateside, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he earned again filming the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.

007 Movie and Professional Changes

But the high point, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.

Subsequent Projects and Return

After this, the director discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and also his body double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.