150 Word Review: 'The Last Of The Mohicans' (1992)
You will find me? Promise?
This is a near-perfect action movie that mixes romance and melancholy. In The Last of the Mohicans, director Michael Mann’s adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper's classic frontier novel, Daniel Day-Lewis is at his hunkiest as musket-wielding tracker Hawkeye, the adopted half-white son of Chingachgook, one of the last of a dying Native American tribe, along with his other Mohican son. The trio rescues a pair of kidnapped British sisters caught in the crossfire of a war between the French and the English for the future of the new world.
The chemistry between Lewis and Madeleine Stowe is palpable, and the ending is uniquely mournful. Wes Studi is tremendous as Magua, a two-faced villain.
Mann is a chronicler of modern men and sprawling cities, but The Last of the Mohicans is a period drama that unfolds exclusively in the forests of 18th-century upstate New York. I wish he’d revisit the genre.
In college I was enamored with not only the movie but also the music. Was one of the only movie soundtrack albums I bought.
I just rewatched this for the first time since the 90s and also wrote about it. It's fine but I remembered it being better. 🤷🏼♂️