🔗 Share this article

In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”

Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, heartfelt picture with a very 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.

American Films and Diverse Work

Stateside, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer he wrote humorously 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 earned again filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.

007 Movie 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 Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.

Later Work and Return

After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son Uday and as well as his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: this was a punchy, watchable movie which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.