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During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: the actor plays the boozing, fighting, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. One son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”

Raw Emotion and Confident Direction

Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, sincere picture with a very 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.

Hollywood Career and Varied Projects

In America, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously 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 earned again directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.

Bond Film and Career Shifts

But the high point, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to recall 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 the dictator's hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, engaging movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.