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During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori made one of the most significant first films of that era, operating at full capacity with his heartbreaking socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori family in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, brawling, bragging dominant benefit recipient Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to intimidate and assault his wife Beth, played by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gangland culture and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter the girl, who has talent as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; another is taken to a youth detention where he is partly educated in the ways of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and learns self-worth and pride. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but in contrast to 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, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, directing them with confidence and energy. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It was a hit with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and talent to commercial projects.

American Films and Diverse Work

Stateside, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for procedure, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who journey through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when the producer he wrote humorously about the turbulent production of shooting with a trained bear in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent suspense film, and he earned again filming the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.

007 Movie and Professional Changes

But the high point, or maybe the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; this was the Bond film mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, viewers asked? This car that makes it difficult to remember where you parked it.

Subsequent Projects and Comeback

Following this, Tamahori found renewed creativity. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred the actor in the twin roles of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son the character and as well as Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a forceful, watchable movie which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. In subsequent times, Tamahori went back to the theme of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, working with writer Shane Danielsen. Tamahori was an outstanding director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.