🔗 Share this article Lee Tamahori's First Film Once Were Warriors Revealed a Director of Guts and Flair During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of that era, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, brawling, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …” Raw Emotion and Confident Direction Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and verve. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could bring that dynamism and flair to commercial projects. Hollywood Career and Diverse Work Stateside, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union. Bond Film and Career Shifts Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of his American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it. Subsequent Projects and Return After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and as well as his body double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a punchy, watchable movie which sidestepped the usual double cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.