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In 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of the decade, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar Maori family in South Auckland: the actor is the drinking, fighting, boasting dominant benefit recipient the father, who comes home from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter the girl, who shows promise as a storyteller. A son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least educated in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains self-worth and pride. But back at the disordered home, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were individuals with honor, pride; people with spirit …”

Raw Emotion and Confident Direction

Tamahori unleashed with all this emotional violence, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, the home scenes and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He created a bold, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who could see how he could apply this energy and talent to mainstream genre material.

American Films and Diverse Work

Stateside, the director made the noir thriller 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 moderate movie gained cult status when the producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of shooting 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 filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.

007 Movie and Professional Changes

Yet the peak, or perhaps the low point, of his Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment derided for having the worst gadget in the series – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need an invisible car, viewers asked? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.

Later Work and Comeback

After this, Tamahori found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and also his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: it was a forceful, watchable movie which sidestepped the usual doppelganger tropes. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.