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In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class indigenous family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the boozing, fighting, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and crime, including his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; the other is taken to a youth detention where he is partly tutored in the ways of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”

Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking

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 verve. He created a bold, sincere film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with audiences and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.

American Films and Diverse Work

In America, Tamahori made the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as characters who trek through wild terrain after their plane crashes. (This film became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he had another payday directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.

Bond Film and Professional Changes

Yet the peak, or maybe the low point, of his Hollywood career was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.

Later Work and Return

Following this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to shield the heir from assassination or kidnapping: this was a punchy, watchable film which avoided the usual double cliches. And in later years, Tamahori returned to the subject of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an exceptional filmmaker – but it was his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.