🔗 Share this article Lee Tamahori's Debut Once Were Warriors Showcased a Director of Guts and Flair During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class indigenous household in Auckland's south: the actor plays the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …” Raw Emotion and Confident Direction Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with assurance and energy. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material. Hollywood Career and Varied Projects Stateside, the director made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer he wrote amusingly 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 earned again filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union. 007 Movie and Career Shifts Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of his American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it. Subsequent Projects and Comeback After this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son Uday and as well as his body double, used to protect the heir from assassination or abduction: this was a punchy, watchable movie which sidestepped the usual doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.