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During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, fighting, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse Beth, his spouse, played by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is at least educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”

Raw Emotion and Confident Direction

Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and verve. He created a bold, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s touch of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could apply this energy and flair to mainstream genre material.

Hollywood Career and Varied Projects

In America, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie gained cult status 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 earned again directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.

Bond Film and Professional Changes

But the high point, or maybe the low point, of his American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.

Subsequent Projects and Return

After this, the director discovered some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, engaging movie which sidestepped the usual doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.