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In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, fighting, boasting dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”

Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how he could apply this energy and flair to commercial projects.

American Films and Varied Projects

In America, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson 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 thriller, and he earned again filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.

007 Movie and Career Shifts

But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.

Subsequent Projects and Return

Following this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son Uday and as well as his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.