🔗 Share this article

In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: the actor is the drinking, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. A son receives tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”

Raw Emotion and Confident Direction

Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a bold, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.

American Films and Varied Projects

Stateside, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.

Bond Film and Professional Changes

Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.

Subsequent Projects and Comeback

Following this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a forceful, watchable film which sidestepped the usual double tropes. In subsequent times, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.