🔗 Share this article

In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori family in Auckland's south: the actor plays the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. One son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”

Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could apply this energy and talent to commercial projects.

Hollywood Career and Diverse Work

In America, Tamahori made 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 his co-star as two men who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.

Bond Film and Career Shifts

But the high point, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.

Subsequent Projects and Comeback

After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also his body double, used to protect the heir from attack or kidnapping: it was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped the usual double cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.