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In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori household in Auckland's south: the actor is the boozing, fighting, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son gets gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”

Raw Emotion and Confident Direction

Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and energy. He created a gutsy, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s touch 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 apply this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.

Hollywood Career and Varied Projects

Stateside, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear 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.

007 Movie and Professional Changes

But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of his Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.

Later Work and Comeback

Following this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and as well as his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a forceful, engaging film which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.