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During 1994, the director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar Maori family in South Auckland: the actor plays the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”

Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking

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 created a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.

American Films and Diverse Work

In America, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of filming 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 triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.

Bond Film and Career Shifts

But the high point, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.

Subsequent Projects and Return

After this, the director found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, engaging film which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.