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During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class indigenous household in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, brawling, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his gentle 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 traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”

Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, heartfelt film with a very 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how he could apply this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.

Hollywood Career and Varied Projects

In America, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer he wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.

Bond Film and Professional Changes

Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s 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. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.

Later Work and Comeback

After this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the heir from attack or abduction: it was a punchy, engaging movie which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, he returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.