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In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, fighting, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have drifted into gangland culture and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. A son gets gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”

Raw Emotion and Confident Direction

Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with assurance and energy. He created a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.

American Films and Diverse Work

Stateside, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday 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 installment mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to recall where you parked it.

Subsequent Projects and Comeback

Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son the character and also his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or kidnapping: it was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided the usual double tropes. And in later years, he returned to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it was his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.