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During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, brawling, boasting dominant welfare claimant the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”

Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.

Hollywood Career and Varied Projects

In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting 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 second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.

Bond Film and Professional Changes

Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.

Subsequent Projects and Return

Following this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and as well as his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable film which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.