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During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. One son receives tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”

Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.

Hollywood Career and Diverse Work

In America, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer he 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 decent thriller, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.

007 Movie and Career Shifts

But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.

Later Work and Comeback

Following this, the director found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a punchy, watchable movie which avoided typical double cliches. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.