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During 1994, this film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant debuts of that era, operating at full capacity with his gut-wrenching social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a working-class Maori family in Auckland's south: the actor is the boozing, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and abuse Beth, his spouse, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his older boys who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his sensitive daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. One son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is at least tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the traditional weapon – and gains dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at the disordered home, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our ancestors used to be fighters, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”

Raw Emotion and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori let rip with all this emotional violence, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and energy. He crafted a bold, sincere film with a distinctly 90s streak of brash and trash. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – whether positive or negative – deeply impressed industry executives in the film industry who could see how he could bring this energy and talent to commercial projects.

Hollywood Career and Varied Projects

In America, Tamahori directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then the David Mamet-scripted survival thriller The Bear with the actor and Alec Baldwin as two men who trek through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie 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 thriller, and he earned again filming the sequel in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.

Bond Film and Career Shifts

But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of his American work was taking on the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the poorest device in the series – a cloaked vehicle. What is the point an invisible car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle which makes it very hard to remember its parking spot.

Subsequent Projects and Return

Following this, Tamahori discovered renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in the twin roles of the dictator's hideous son Uday and also his body double, used to shield the young tyrant-princeling from assassination or abduction: this was a punchy, engaging movie which sidestepped the usual double cliches. And in later years, he went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his first film, the heartfelt Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.