🔗 Share this article Lee Tamahori's First Film Once Were Warriors Revealed a Filmmaker of Guts and Flair During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: the actor is the drinking, fighting, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …” Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with assurance and verve. He crafted a bold, sincere picture with a very 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material. Hollywood Career and Varied Projects In America, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances 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 earned again filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union. 007 Movie and Career Shifts Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of his Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it. Subsequent Projects and Comeback Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and as well as his body double, used to protect the heir from assassination or kidnapping: it was a forceful, engaging movie which sidestepped the usual doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.