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In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest first films of that era, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar Maori family in Auckland's south: the actor is the boozing, brawling, bragging dominant welfare claimant the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future 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. One son receives tattoos; the other is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit …”

Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with the pub scenes, domestic moments and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a bold, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with viewers and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and flair to commercial projects.

Hollywood Career and Varied Projects

Stateside, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer he wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he had another payday directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.

007 Movie and Career Shifts

But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of his Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.

Subsequent Projects and Return

Following this, Tamahori discovered 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 Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the heir from attack or abduction: it was a punchy, watchable film which avoided the usual double tropes. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.