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During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”

Emotional Violence and Confident Direction

Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who recognized how he could apply this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.

Hollywood Career and Diverse Work

In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable 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 perhaps the low point, of his American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.

Later Work and Return

Following this, the director found some more interesting form. His 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 protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a punchy, watchable movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.