🔗 Share this article Lee Tamahori's Debut Once Were Warriors Showcased a Filmmaker of Guts and Flair During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar indigenous household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, fighting, boasting dominant welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. A son receives tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …” 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, handling them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, sincere film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who could see how he could bring this energy and flair to commercial projects. Hollywood Career and Varied Projects Stateside, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable 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 nadir, 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 worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it. Later Work and Return Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable movie which sidestepped typical double cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating 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.