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In 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar indigenous family in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and pride. But back at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”

Emotional Violence and Confident Direction

Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and verve. He created a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who could see how he could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.

Hollywood Career and Diverse Work

In America, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he earned again filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.

Bond Film and Professional Changes

Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of his American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.

Later Work and Comeback

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 his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable movie which sidestepped the usual doppelganger cliches. And in later years, he went back to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.