🔗 Share this article Lee Tamahori's Debut Once Were Warriors Showcased a Director of Courage and Style During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class indigenous family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, fighting, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant the father, 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 five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …” Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and energy. He created a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply this energy and flair to mainstream genre material. Hollywood Career and Diverse Work In America, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he earned again directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union. Bond Film and Professional Changes Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it. Later Work and Comeback Following this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: it was a forceful, engaging film which sidestepped the usual doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.