From: leeper@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (mark.r.leeper)
Subject: THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS
Organization: AT&T
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 16:47:34 GMT

                          THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS
                      A film review by Mark R. Leeper

          Capsule review:  Michael Mann's LAST OF THE MOHICANS is
     finally available and while James Fenimore Cooper might
     cavil, this is still a film that teaches a lot about a
     little-dramatized chapter of history.  In some ways it is
     more intriguing in concept than the source novel.  Technical
     credits are good across the board including remarkable
     stylistic restraint coming from Mann.  Rating: high +2 (-4 to
     +4).

     I would say that I am fairly interested in history in general and in
military history in particular.  But not so much the War of the Roses.  That
war just does not strike my imagination.  Why not?  I think I cannot picture
the time.  I cannot picture how the war was fought or how people lived.
Mostly, I cannot remember off-hand seeing a good historical film set in the
War of the Roses.  So it is all just history.  This morning the same was
true of the French and Indian War.  I have even recently read James Fenimore
Cooper's LAST OF THE MOHICANS, but I just could not picture exactly what the
weapons looked like or the style of fighting.  But right now I have strong
visual images of the French and Indian War.  I can picture the cannons and
how they were aimed.  I am amazed at how remarkably quiet skirmishes in the
forests were.  Most of my impressions of the French and Indian War I got
today.  So THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS could be a terrible adaptation of the
Cooper novel--and in some senses it really is--and I would still highly
recommend the film.  And I do.

     Cooper's novel makes strange reading today.  It has the action and
adventure of a Republic serial told in the style of prose fit for an Oxford
economic treatise.  You want to read fast to find out what happens next, but
if you do not struggle you will miss what does happen.  Mark Twain wrote a
famous essay on how unreadable Cooper is.  And there is many times too much
plot in the novel to tell the story accurately in a film.  Michael Mann (who
also directed) and Christopher Crowe wrote a screenplay too close to say it
was only inspired by the novel, but not close enough to call an adaptation.

     The year is 1757 in what is now upper New York state.  The British and
the French are fighting for the continent and each is making alliances with
local Indians tribes.  The British send a small party, led by Major Duncan
Heyward (played by Steven Waddington) to take Cora and Alice Munro (played
by Madeleine Stowe and Jodhi May) to the fort commanded by their father.  As
a guide, they send the Mohawk Magua (played by Wes Studi).  But Magua is not
a Mohawk; he is a hostile Huron who is acting as a French agent.  He leads
the party into an ambush only to have his plot dashed when the Major, Cora,
and Alice are rescued by Hawkeye, Chingachgook, and Uncas (played by Daniel
Day-Lewis, Russell Means, and Eric Schweig, respectively).  In spite of
himself, Hawkeye is attracted to Cora.  So is the Major and so starts a
conflict totally absent from the novel.  A lot of the rest of this film is
about people rushing someplace or other through dangerous territory, but
under the protection of the valiant Hawkeye and his adoptive father and
brother, Chingachgook and Uncas.  The action is good; the love triangle is
not.

     One of my complaints about the often-shown trailer is that we do not
see the title character.  In fact, in the film the action pulls away from
Chingachgook and we do not see much of the character.  It is a combination
of a casting coup and an endorsement of the script to have Russell Means in
the role.  This is Means's first film, but it is far from the first time
that Means has been before the American public.  Means has been a creative
activist for Indian rights who has had a consistent policy of attacking
symbols rather than people in demonstrations.  In 1970 he captured the
Mayflower II on Thanksgiving.  The following year he occupied Mount
Rushmore.  In 1973 he occupied the site of the Wounded Knee massacre of
Indians by United States soldiers.  He is the co-founder of the American
Indian Movement (AIM).  Means castigated recent films such as DANCES WITH
WOLVES, which he found full of cliches and which had all the Indians
speaking the feminine language that only women spoke.  He has nicknamed
THUNDERHEART "South Dakota Burning" for making good guys out of the FBI.  To
have Means consent to appear in the film and to endorse the script is quite
impressive.

     When I think of films that Michael Mann has directed I think of flashy
but not very intelligent style.  I think of THE KEEP and MANHUNTER.  (I have
never seen an episode of his popular television series MIAMI VICE.)  Perhaps
his fans will be disappointed but there are no strange camera angles and no
unnatural use of color.  Many of his scenes come off surprisingly undramatic
but also very credible.  In one scene there is an ambush of a party of
British trooping through a clearing.  It could have been played for great
dramatic impact.  Instead it appears as a sudden commotion that could well
have just been confusing for some of the victims, at least at first.  The
scene is very believable and realistic, if less dramatic than it could be.
And that shows a real improvement in Mann's style.  This film is amazingly
better than anything else I remember seeing from Mann.  While these are not
the most beautiful landscapes in the world, cinematographer Dante Spinotti
plays the natural beauty for as much as is possible.  Trevor Jones and Randy
Edelman have composed a remarkably good score.

     For those familiar with the novel, there are a large number of
variations, some very obviously improvements.  Cooper had Hawkeye totally
loyal to unquestionably good British.  In this version, the British appear
as bad or worse than the French.  They are ready to betray the colonists for
their own ends.  Hawkeye, very reasonably, does not trust the British in the
film and will have more reason not to like them in the course of the story.
Heyward and Hawkeye are good friends in the book.  But the film has Heyward
attracted to Cora instead of to Alice and Hawkeye also loves Cora.  In the
book you have to read between the lines to see a relationship between
Hawkeye and Cora.  Certainly Cooper never had the close personal
conversations between Hawkeye and Cora.  They never talk in the book about
how they feel about anything, much less about each other.  Also, Magua is
very much a one-dimensional character to Cooper and is much more interesting
in the film.

     So in spite of the fact that Michael Mann's film does not work well as
an adaptation of the novel, it is a very good film to watch and from which
to learn a little history.  It lacks some of the dramatic and historic sweep
of this summer's FAR AND AWAY, but it may be the better historical film.  I
would rate THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.

					Mark R. Leeper
					att!mtgzy!leeper
					leeper@mtgzy.att.com
					Copyright 1992 Mark R. Leeper