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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 his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”

Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, heartfelt film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could bring this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.

Hollywood Career and Varied Projects

Stateside, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as two men who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson 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 decent suspense film, and he earned again directing the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.

Bond Film and Career Shifts

Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of his American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.

Subsequent Projects and Comeback

After this, the director found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also his body double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a punchy, watchable movie which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.