🔗 Share this article

In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class Maori household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, brawling, boasting dominant benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. A son gets tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”

Raw Emotion and Confident Direction

Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing 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 reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.

Hollywood Career and Varied Projects

Stateside, the director directed 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 the actor 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 droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.

Bond Film and Professional Changes

But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of his Hollywood career was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.

Subsequent Projects and Return

Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also his body double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: it was a forceful, watchable movie which sidestepped the usual doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.