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During 1994, this director Lee Tamahori delivered one of the most significant first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the gut-wrenching socially conscious melodrama Once Were Warriors. The Mekes represent a working-class indigenous family in Auckland's south: the actor plays the drinking, brawling, boasting alpha-male welfare claimant Jake, who returns from pub visits with his weak followers to intimidate and abuse his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their kids. He is entirely indifferent to the future of his older boys who have drifted into gangland culture and crime, as well as his gentle daughter the girl, who has talent as a storyteller. One son gets gang tattoos; another is sent to a youth detention where he is at least tutored in the traditions of indigenous heritage – the haka and the taiaha warrior spear – and gains dignity and self-respect. Meanwhile at Jake’s chaotic house, the daughter is assaulted by Jake’s grotesque friend “Bully”; disaster follows, and Beth forcefully challenges the wretched Jake: “Our people once were warriors, but unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; soulful beings …”

Raw Emotion and Confident Direction

Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, the home scenes and the gang ritual initiation scenes, handling them with confidence and verve. He created a gutsy, heartfelt film with a very 90s streak of edginess. It succeeded with audiences and reviewers, and – for good or ill – deeply impressed studio heads in the film industry who recognized how Tamahori could bring that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.

American Films and Diverse Work

In America, Tamahori made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about aggressive police officers who care nothing for protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with the actor and his co-star as characters who trek through the wilderness after their plane crashes. (This moderate movie became a cult favorite when its producer Art Linson wrote amusingly about the chaotic circumstances of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a decent thriller, and he earned again directing the second in the triple-X franchise XXX State of the Union.

Bond Film and Career Shifts

But the high point, or perhaps the low point, of Lee Tamahori’s American work was directing the 007 film Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment mocked for having the poorest device in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, viewers asked? This car which makes it very hard to remember where you parked it.

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 brutal offspring Uday and also his body double, used to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a punchy, engaging movie which avoided the usual doppelganger tropes. In subsequent times, he returned to the subject of indigenous traditions, directing The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an outstanding filmmaker – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his masterpiece.