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During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class indigenous family in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. A son receives tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”

Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a bold, heartfelt film with a very 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who could see how he could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.

Hollywood Career and Diverse Work

Stateside, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday directing the sequel 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 American work 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 such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.

Later Work and Return

Following this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging movie which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.