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During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: the actor is the boozing, fighting, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who returns from pub visits with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were individuals with honor, dignity; people with spirit …”

Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and energy. He created a bold, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could apply this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.

American Films and Varied Projects

In America, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer he wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.

007 Movie and Professional Changes

Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of his American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.

Subsequent Projects and Comeback

After this, the director found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the heir from assassination or abduction: it was a forceful, engaging movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.