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In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar Maori household in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. A son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains self-worth and pride. But back at the disordered home, Grace is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”

Raw Emotion and Confident Direction

Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s touch of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how he could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.

Hollywood Career and Varied Projects

In America, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer he wrote humorously about the turbulent production 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 filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.

Bond Film and Career Shifts

Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.

Subsequent Projects and Return

After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in dual parts of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, watchable film which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.