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In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: the actor plays the boozing, brawling, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. A son receives tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”

Emotional Violence and Confident Direction

Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and energy. He created a gutsy, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.

American Films and Varied Projects

In America, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book 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.

007 Movie and Professional Changes

But the high point, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.

Later Work and Comeback

Following this, the director found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a forceful, engaging movie which avoided typical double tropes. And in later years, he returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.