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Leave it to Michael Mann, creator of "Miami Vice", the quintessential 1980's chic cop drama, to wipe away centuries' worth of dust and must from James Fenimore Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans" and uncover the still beating heart of an action adventure film within. His exhilarating film is replete with chases, gun battles and a deeply felt and genuinely adult love story as well as an appreciation of nature that a charter member of Greenpeace could endorse.
The deep woods of North Carolina are perhaps the only place in the country that could successfully evoke the forest primeval of pre-Revolutionary War America (at least in 1992, when the film was made). No wonder Cora Munro (Madeleine Stowe, currently starring in television's "Revenge") comments to her future lover Nathaniel/Hawkeye (Daniel Day Lewis) regarding her geographical as well as her emotional situation: "It is more deeply stirring to my blood than any imagining could be." Freed of the social constraints imposed on her in her role as a British colonel's elder unmarried daughter, Cora can return Nathaniel's male gaze with equally passionate intensity.
For Daniel Day Lewis, "Mohicans" marks the first fully realized American characterization by this Anglo-Irish actor who would span the emotional and political landscape of America from the Puritan rebel, John Proctor in "The Crucible" (1996) to our most beloved and highly regarded president in "Lincoln" (2012). In between those multi-faceted performances, Day Lewis would offer us such diverse Americans as Bill the Butcher, a Civil War racist and xenophobe in "The Gangs of New York" (2002), Newland Archer, an emotionally repressed New York aristocrat in the Gilded Age in "The Age of Innocence" (1993) and Daniel Plainview, a murderously sociopathic oil magnate at the turn of the 20th century in "There Will Be Blood" (2007). For DDL, America begins here.
Lewis's Nathaniel/Hawkeye is a prototypical American hero before there was a U.S. A. He is the bare-chested romantic ideal, a man of action with a variety of weapons, especially the long rifle (score one for the advocates of the Second Amendment) and yet he is also an exemplar of racial tolerance, if not integration (ACLU, take note), raised as he was among the Mohicans. The entire film exhibits a politically correct sensitivity to Native Americans and their attitudes toward the natural world of which they consider themselves a part, brothers even to dead deer. This attitude is reflected in the real deal casting of Russell Means as the title character and Wes Studi as a seriously terrifying, seriously well motivated Magua, the film's arch villain.
The cinematography of Dante Spinotti, riveting in all kinds of light, as well as the minutely accurate production design of Wolf Kroeger, make us believe that America was once an Eden where man lived in harmony with nature and oftentimes with each other; though there are tribal animosities and the presence of the imperial powers of Britain and France, there is also the spectacle of a Native American single father raising his blood son and his adopted American son as equals. Even the ancient trees seem fresh and new, dialectical elements in a film that is at once refreshingly old fashioned (there are scenes evocative of 2 John Ford films, "Drums along the Mohawk" (1939)- by virtue of the French and Indian War setting and "The Searchers" (1956),reflected in the discovery of the victims of an Indian massacre), and as contemporary as the latest discussions of imperialism and patriotism.
After a night spent with Nathaniel, Cora speaks truth to power in the person of her father, Colonel Munro, using revolutionary rhetoric. Her sister's nascent love affair with the Mohican Uncas is terminated by the death of each, but has elements of an interracial Romeo and Juliet to it. They are us, we are them.
Ultimately, "The Last of the Mohicans" throbs with romantic intensity, especially in the central performances of Day Lewis and Stowe and the pulsating score by Trevor Jones and Danny Elfman. Michael Mann directs with unrelenting energy and the Oscar-winning sound mix totally immerses the viewer in a long gone but amazingly recognizable world. 20th Century Fox has produced a Blu-ray of sharp imagery and piercing sound. Simply put, this Blu-ray rocks.
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From the manufacturer
The Last of the Mohicans
British and French troops do battle in colonial America, with aid from various native American war parties. The British troops enlist the help of local colonial militia men, who are reluctant to leave their homes undefended. A budding romance between a British officer's daughter and an independent man who was reared as a Mohawk complicates things for the British officer, as the adopted Mohawk pursues his own agenda despite the wrath of different people on both sides of the conflict.
Genres - Action / Drama
Run Time - 113 mins
Director- Michael Mann
Cast - Daniel Day-Lewis,Jodhi May, Madeleine Stowe
Resealer - Buyer Beware
I purchased mine as a new product and it had definitely been resealed. You can tell by the wavy lines in the case's plastic which is damage from the heat gun during the shrink process. Amazon needs to crack down on these resealers.Besides Amazon's negligence, this movie is amazing.
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- Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2014
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Top reviews from other countries
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PanikinfoReviewed in France on July 16, 2014
Sublime film, même si la description sur le site est fausse.
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