The Last of the Mohicans (1992)
Directed by Michael Mann
In war-torn colonial America, in the midst of a bloody battle between British, the French and Native American allies, the aristocratic daughter of a British Colonel and her party are captured by a group of Huron warriors. Fortunately, a group of three Mohican trappers comes to their rescue.
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7 films that influenced The Last of the Mohicans
What critics say influenced The Last of the Mohicans
Michael Mann , who directed "The Last of the Mohicans," says that his first conscious movie memory was of the 1936 film version of the same story, starring Randolph Scott, and indeed Philip Dunne's screenplay for that movie is cited as a source for this one.
"The Last of the Mohicans," a rapturous revision of the schoolroom classic, follows the trail blazed by "Dances With Wolves" and more recently "Unforgiven."
“The Last of the Mohicans” came out following the unprecedented success of Kevin Costner’s “Dances with Wolves,” and a more understanding view of the Native Americans was all the rage at the time.
Contrary to what you might expect, this fourth film version of James Fenimore Cooper's novel, once mandatory reading in grade school, is no revisionist apologia for American history, like the politically correct Dances With Wolves.
Scalping is also graphically depicted, as is a particularly nasty form of heart surgery reminiscent of "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom."
I am the first to confess I know little about how people really lived in the first decades of the European settlement of North America, but while I was watching "The Last of the Mohicans," I was haunted by memories of another movie -- " Black Robe " (1991), set in the earliest days of the French settlement of Quebec.
Neither as cuddly as the tribes of "Dances With Wolves" nor as bloodthirsty as those in "Black Robe," they are nevertheless ruthless in combat.
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The small party slips through enemy lines into an "Apocalypse Now" of the period.
In his other movies, Mann's specialty has been a chic, chilly existential pulp angst that's as simplistic and inflated as his titles -- "Thief," "Manhunter," "Heat."
Mann seems a peculiar choice for directing this film, given his slick, dreamy ouevre (TV's Miami Vice and the films Manhunter, Band of the Hand, and Thief).
Mann seems a peculiar choice for directing this film, given his slick, dreamy ouevre (TV's Miami Vice and the films Manhunter, Band of the Hand, and Thief).