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During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class Maori household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, brawling, boasting dominant welfare claimant Jake, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and assault Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son receives tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and self-respect. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”

Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and energy. He created a gutsy, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who recognized how he could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.

Hollywood Career and Diverse Work

In America, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and his co-star as two men who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.

007 Movie and Career Shifts

Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.

Later Work and Comeback

Following this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and as well as his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: it was a forceful, watchable film which sidestepped the usual double tropes. And in later years, he returned to the subject 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 debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.