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During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a working-class indigenous household in South Auckland: Temuera Morrison is the boozing, fighting, boasting alpha-male benefit recipient the father, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and assault Beth, his spouse, played by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the fate of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. A son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by a repulsive acquaintance “Bully”; tragedy ensues, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but in contrast to you, they, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”

Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori unleashed with such emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with assurance and verve. He created a bold, heartfelt picture with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and talent to mainstream genre material.

Hollywood Career and Varied Projects

In America, Tamahori directed the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as characters who journey through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly 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 suspense film, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.

007 Movie and Career Shifts

Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.

Later Work and Return

After this, Tamahori discovered some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of the dictator's brutal offspring Uday and also his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided typical doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, he returned to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.