An Action Packed Rollercoaster Ride from Start to Finish

There are very few movies that move me enough in either plot or action, to warrant a second look, let alone a devotional following that compels me buy the movie, take it out, dust it off, and watch it every year without fail. Hunt for Red October is one of those movies; Last of the Mohicans is another.

Last of the Mohicans is not your quintessential cowboys and Indians movie; it is a sweeping vista of historical fiction hinged on the edge of the French & Indian Wars between the Great Britain and France. This war defined the thirteen colonies that were to be come the United States of America, and forever changed the course of native American populations in the “new World.”

Written, produced, and directed by Michael Mann (Ali, TV's Miami Vice) with musical score (and what a score) by Trevor Jones and Randy Edelman, Last of the Mohicans is steeped in action, suspense, high drama and love. Mann, a veteran of the action genre, certainly knows how to keep viewers on the edge of their seats, and he does so artfully in The Last of the Mohicans.

Storyline

Michael Mann’s rendering is just the latest of several big-screen adaptations of James Fenimore Cooper's timeless novel. This time out, Oscar-winner Daniel Day-Lewis (The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Boxer) portrays Hawkeye a.k.a. Nathanial Poe, the adopted son of a Mohican Indian, Chingachgook portrayed with quite intelligence by new comer Russell Means. The two are in league with Chingachgook’s biological son Uncas, portrayed by Eric Schwig.

After saving two sisters—Cora (Madeleine Stowe – Unlawful Entry, We Were Soldiers), and Alice (Jodhi May) from a war party led by a Huron Indian named Magua (Wes Studi), the Mohicans become reluctant guides, escorting the women and Cora’s would be suitor Major Duncan Hayward (Steven Waddington) to the safety of a nearby British fort. The commander of the fort (Fort William Henry), Colonel Edmund Monroe (Maurice Roëves) is the father of Cora and Alice, and they have journey from England to see him.

Meanwhile Mague who acts as a scout to the British is secretly in league with the French is an effort to seek revenge on Monroe for slaughtering his whole family.

Along the way Hawkeye and Cora form a connection based on mutual respect and a dark brooding passion, and as the movie unwinds through lush green forest and crystal streams and rivers, harkening back to days of yore the world seems to come apart around them. Yes, Last of the Mohicans is a movie about armed struggle, and strive, betrayal, and revenge, but at its core, it is a love story.

A love story with non-stop action; blistering hand-to-hand combat, men racing through the trees and along cliff-sides with the swiftness of deer, jumping into waterfalls and battling rivers. A love story set to the most enchanting musically score I have ever heard.

My Thoughts

As if the majestic and hauntingly beautiful music alone weren’t enough to stop me in my tracks, the acting and scenery most certainly pulled me in. Day-Lewis and Stowe share a chemistry that is electric; so compelling is it that you can almost feel the current running between them, jump off the screen and shock you.

Madeline Stowe has a shy, almost reluctant beauty about her. Her eyes and gaze are intense, and if you a caught in her stare, you are unable to pull away. The looks she gives Day-Lewis throughout the movie, of lust and longing, speak to the strength of a woman’s love for a man. And Day-Lewis’ devotion to her to the bitter end is something sonnets are written about and verses sung. Day-Lewis has the uncanny knack of really, really becoming his character, and drawing you into his world, so that you have no choice but to care about whom he has become.

But the movie is about more than romance at the height of the French and English battle for the upper reaches of America, it is a rare glimpse into the relationship between the English frontiersman and their would-be English rulers, and one can see foreshadowing’s of the American Revolution in its telling. The movie also gives us a better understanding of the Native American people’s role in this struggle for dominance between the two European nations over a land that was not theirs to claim. And lastly it is about the devotion, trust, and loyalty of family, and the bond that can be formed between people with a common purpose.

Last of the Mohicans moves along at a pretty brisk pace, with action that will have your heart pounding in anticipation. I love the close hand-to-hand combat scenes between the Indians and the English, and the Indians against one another. The skill in which they wield their weapons is inspiring (if you are into that sort of thing which for better of worse, I am). My favorite scene is at the end when, well…I play that scene over and over again, it is shot so well.

Its almost time (this weekend seems fitting) to dust the movie off again, pop some popcorn, grab some M&M’s (plain not peanut) and settle in to be entertained to the fullest. Last of the Mohicans stands out for me as one of my favorite movies; indeed it deserves a place of honor on my DVD shelve next to Hunt for Red October.