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In 1994, the director Lee Tamahori made one of the biggest debuts of that era, firing on all six cylinders with his gut-wrenching socially conscious drama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes are a blue-collar Maori family in Auckland's south: the actor plays the drinking, brawling, bragging dominant welfare claimant Jake, who returns from drinking in the pub with his weak followers to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by the actress, and their five children. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his two elder sons who have drifted into gang life and crime, as well as his gentle daughter Grace, who shows promise as a writer. A son gets gang tattoos; another is taken to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly tutored in the traditions of Maori culture – the war dance and the traditional weapon – and learns dignity and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is raped by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the despicable Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; soulful beings …”

Emotional Violence and Skilled Filmmaking

Tamahori let rip with such intense drama, and delivered powerful blows with the pub scenes, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, sincere picture with a distinctly 90s streak of edginess. It was a hit with viewers and critics, and – for good or ill – strongly influenced studio heads in Hollywood who recognized how Tamahori could bring this energy and talent to commercial projects.

Hollywood Career and Diverse Work

Stateside, the director directed the dark mystery Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who journey through wild terrain after a plane crash. (This moderate movie gained cult status when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the turbulent production of shooting 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 second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.

007 Movie and Professional Changes

Yet the peak, or perhaps the nadir, of Lee Tamahori’s Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with Pierce Brosnan; it was the Bond film derided for having the worst gadget in the series – the invisible car. What is the point such a car, audiences wondered? It was a vehicle that makes it difficult to recall its parking spot.

Later Work and Comeback

After this, the director 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 young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a forceful, engaging film which avoided the usual doppelganger cliches. And in later years, Tamahori went back to the subject of Maori culture, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer his partner. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it was his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.