🔗 Share this article The Director's Debut Once Were Warriors Showcased a Director of Guts and Flair During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar Maori family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son receives gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …” Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking 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 created a bold, sincere picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who recognized how he could bring 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 ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union. Bond Film and Career Shifts But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of his American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot. Later Work and Comeback After this, the director found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging film which avoided typical double tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.