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During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family are a blue-collar indigenous family in Auckland's south: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. One son gets tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”

Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and energy. He crafted a bold, sincere picture with a very 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and reviewers, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.

Hollywood Career and Diverse Work

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

Bond Film and Professional Changes

Yet the peak, or maybe the nadir, of his American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.

Later Work and Return

Following this, the director discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the heir from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, engaging movie which avoided typical doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.