🔗 Share this article

In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar indigenous family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son receives tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”

Raw Emotion and Confident Direction

Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.

Hollywood Career and Varied Projects

Stateside, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.

007 Movie and Career Shifts

Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of his Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.

Subsequent Projects and Return

After this, the director found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and also his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging film which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he 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 filmmaker – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.