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During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of the decade, firing on all six cylinders with the gut-wrenching social-realist drama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar indigenous household in South Auckland: the actor plays the boozing, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gangland culture and crime, including his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. One son receives tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, dignity; soulful beings …”

Raw Emotion and Confident Direction

Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and energy. He crafted a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s touch of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in the film industry who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.

American Films and Varied Projects

In America, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (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 witty Hollywood book 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 Career Shifts

Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.

Later Work 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 brutal offspring Uday and as well as his body double, employed to shield the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: it was a punchy, engaging film which sidestepped the usual double cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori returned to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. Tamahori was an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.