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During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar indigenous family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son receives tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”

Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori let rip with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who could see how he could apply this energy and flair to commercial projects.

Hollywood Career and Varied Projects

In America, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer he 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 suspense film, and he had another payday directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.

007 Movie and Career Shifts

But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.

Later Work and Comeback

Following this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or kidnapping: it was a punchy, engaging movie which sidestepped typical double tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.