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During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori family in South Auckland: the actor plays the boozing, fighting, bragging alpha-male benefit recipient Jake, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but in contrast to you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; soulful beings …”

Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori let rip with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.

Hollywood Career and Diverse Work

Stateside, the director directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable suspense film, and he earned again directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.

007 Movie and Professional Changes

But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.

Later Work and Comeback

Following this, the director discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and also his body double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a forceful, watchable film which sidestepped the usual double tropes. In subsequent times, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.