🔗 Share this article Lee Tamahori's Debut Once Were Warriors Showcased a Director of Guts and Flair 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 social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar indigenous family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …” Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who could see how he could apply this energy and talent to commercial projects. American Films and Varied Projects In America, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer he wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union. Bond Film and Professional Changes Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of his American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot. Subsequent Projects and Comeback After this, the director found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and as well as his body double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or kidnapping: it was a forceful, watchable film which avoided the usual double tropes. And in later years, he returned to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.