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During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, fighting, boasting dominant benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”

Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a bold, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.

Hollywood Career and Diverse Work

Stateside, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted 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 its producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.

Bond Film and Professional Changes

Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.

Subsequent Projects and Return

Following this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the heir from attack or abduction: this was a punchy, engaging movie which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.