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During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, fighting, bragging 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 five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One 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 taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”

Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and energy. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.

American Films and Varied Projects

Stateside, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.

Bond Film and Career Shifts

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 Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.

Later Work and Comeback

After this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in the twin roles 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 forceful, watchable film which sidestepped typical double cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.