Reader Recommends: The Last of the Mohicans (1992)

Today I grabbed another recommended movie, again from @tokenuser. This time it was The Last of the Mohicans. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from this one, but I certainly recognized the title and the cover of the movie. There was a time when a lot of films focusing on the same subject matter seemed to come out, and I always get them mixed up, this being one of them. It's because of this reason that I really haven't seen many films like this one since there didn't seem to be much to make it stand out from all the others in my mind. Well @tokenuser certainly changed that by recommending this one specifically. Find my thoughts after the jump.


I'm not sure how popular this movie is and how many people have seen it. It may very well be that I'm wasting my time describing the story, but I'm going to doing anyways out of habit. Daniel Day-Lewis stars as the sharp shooter Hawkeye. He's the adopted son of a Mohican man named Chingachgook, played by Russell Means. Together with Chingachgook's birth-son Uncas (Eric Shweig), they hunt in the frontier lands to survive. When the French and English go to war over America, everyone has to pick a side. At first the Mohican family refuses, but when a Huron war party attacks a group of English in the forest, they save the last English survivors. Included among the survivors are 2 beautiful women, the daughters of a leader in the English army. After escorting them to their father's fort, they get mixed up in the war and are forced to fight to save the girls whom the sons have come to love.

Plenty of action and chaos to go around

When I went into this film, I figured it was going to be a slow, sad drama. That is definitely not what I found. The Last of the Mohicans opens with the three Mohican men running through a forest at blinding speed, backed by high energy music. Right away I was captivated, wondering what they were running from? As it turns out they weren't running from, but were chasing a deer. Thus it establishes their livelihoods in the most thrilling way I could have imagined. From then on there is a ton of action with all the battles and wars and chases and attacks with suitable pauses in between to keep a steady pace of highs and lows. Never letting you get bored, but keeping the action interesting because you're not always cranked up to 10 the whole time.

Another funny point was my recognition of the name Daniel Day-Lewis, but not recognizing anyone in the film. "How do I not know who this is?" I thought. Even after the film and finding out he plays Hawkeye, I still couldn't figure out who he was. I just didn't recognize him at all. Further investigation revealed the answer to me, that I'd seen him as the main character in There Will Be Blood. NOW I finally know why people keep telling me this man is one of the best actors ever. When I go see a Tom Hanks movie, I'm often not seeing the character, but instead just Tom Hanks acting well. But when I see a Daniel Day-Lewis movie, I'm not seeing Daniel Day-Lewis, I'm seeing the character as a real person. This realization has left me pretty amazed.

Hawkeye is the best shot in the entire frontier!

I should be honest with you, I'd be hard pressed to find anything actually bad, or even poor, about this movie. The music always fit, and the cinematography was amazing with huge expansive shots of the landscape. They're constantly traveling through interesting country side with untouched streams and rapids and waterfalls and cliffs. When we're not in settings like this, we're often in the middle of brutal wars or behind the front lines in a cool fort.

I even liked all of the actors. Sure that English dude was a dick, but I totally believed he was his character, and I never got that fake feeling of a poor performance from anyone. Madeleine Stowe was great as the female lead, and I thought it was awesome when she grabbed a huge pistol from a dead man and stuffed it into the pocket of her dress. Eric Schweig as the ever quiet Uncas was a strong silent man you could count on. Wes Studi as the betraying Magua is probably one of the better villains I've seen in a movie in a long time.

Great cinematography fills this movie from front to back

I've praised this movie a ton, but I should temper my adulation just a bit. While this was a really really good film, I wouldn't say it's the best I've ever seen. A lot rides on the believability of the relationship between Hawkeye and Cora, and actually a lot of weight is thrust onto the side characters that actually don't speak that much. I think I'm fortunate that I was able to accept the feelings of the lead characters, and that I felt something for side characters that have little character development. I could definitely understand if someone couldn't get into a movie like this. Luckily, I'm not one of those people.

The Last of the Mohicans was a beautiful film and I'm really glad I saw it. It definitely has one of the more powerful final scenes and fights in all the films I've watched. I know there have to be more high quality films out there that I've totally missed and are just waiting to be pointed out and discovered. It's movies like this that I think most people assume that everyone has seen, and so they never recommend them thinking you've seen them. And it's exactly for movies like this that make what I'm doing with this blog all worth while. This is another great film that I would have probably never seen otherwise. Thank you @tokenuser, you nailed it yet again.