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During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori family in Auckland's south: Temuera Morrison plays the drinking, brawling, bragging alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their kids. 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 shows promise as a storyteller. A son gets tattoos; the other is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; tragedy ensues, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people used to be fighters, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”

Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.

Hollywood Career and Varied Projects

Stateside, 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 characters who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his droll tinseltown memoir What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he earned again filming the sequel 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 American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in 007 history – the invisible car. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall where you parked it.

Later Work and Return

After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son the character and also Uday’s decoy double, used to protect the heir from attack or kidnapping: this was a forceful, engaging movie which sidestepped typical doppelganger cliches. And in later years, he went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, working with writer his partner. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it was his debut, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.