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During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori family in South Auckland: the actor plays the boozing, brawling, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who comes home from pub visits with his weak followers to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their kids. He shows no concern to the fate of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, as well as his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a storyteller. One son receives gang tattoos; the other is sent to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and self-respect. But back at the disordered home, Grace 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, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”

Emotional Violence and Confident Direction

Tamahori unleashed with all this intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, directing them with confidence and verve. He crafted a gutsy, sincere picture with a very 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and critics, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in Hollywood who could see how he could bring this energy and flair to commercial projects.

American Films and Varied Projects

In America, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet adventure drama The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when the producer he wrote amusingly 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 had another payday filming the second in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.

007 Movie and Professional Changes

But the high point, or maybe the nadir, of his American work was taking on the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; this was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in the series – the invisible car. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to remember its parking spot.

Later Work and Return

After this, the director found some more interesting form. His The Devil’s Double in 2011 starred Dominic Cooper in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s brutal offspring Uday and also his body double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: it was a punchy, engaging movie which avoided typical doppelganger tropes. And in later years, he went back to the theme of Maori culture, directing The Convert in 2023, working with Australian critic-turned-screenwriter his partner. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.