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During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: the actor plays the boozing, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a storyteller. A son receives tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”

Emotional Violence and Confident Direction

Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and energy. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who recognized how he could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.

Hollywood Career and Varied Projects

In America, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when its 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 had another payday filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.

007 Movie and Career Shifts

But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.

Subsequent Projects and Return

After this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the heir from attack or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging film which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.