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During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of that era, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar indigenous family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, fighting, bragging dominant benefit recipient the father, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”

Raw Emotion and Confident Direction

Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and energy. He created a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.

Hollywood Career and Diverse Work

Stateside, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer he 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 filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.

Bond Film and Professional Changes

Yet the peak, or maybe 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 Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. 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

Following this, the director found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: it was a forceful, engaging movie which sidestepped the usual double tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.