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During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a blue-collar indigenous family in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, brawling, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault 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, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets gang tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and pride. But back at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”

Raw Emotion and Confident Direction

Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a very 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could bring this energy and flair to commercial projects.

Hollywood Career and Diverse Work

In America, the director directed the dark mystery 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 Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.

Bond Film and Career Shifts

Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of his American work was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.

Later Work and Comeback

Following this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The 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, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging movie which sidestepped the usual doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.