The Last of the Mohicans

Bold and stirring with impeccable production values, The Last of the Mohicans is a memorable motion picture adventure, and one of the best films of the year. Read full review

Michael Mann , directs with his standard prejudice toward the sheer physical. The result, almost musical, has only a couple recent movie precedents. [25 Sep 1992, p.1D]

The story, the acting, the cinematography are all so potent that they overwhelm us in the best way possible. The violence is brutal and graphic, yet compelling. [23 Sep 1992]

Never mind the gorgeous wilderness backdrop, the 18th-Century details, the carefully voiced and subtitled American Indian dialogue. From its very first frame until seconds before closing credits, "Mohicans" is an action movie. [25 Sep 1992]

The first hour of The Last of the Mohicans plays like a convoluted history lesson. I appreciate that Mann has enough respect for the audience's intelligence to sketch in this briar patch of conflicting loyalties. But he outlines the interlocking factions without really making it clear, in dramatic terms, what each one stands for. Read full review

When this historical adventure kicks in, it's thrilling in the way old-fashioned epics used to be, but its romanticism has a fierce, violent physicality that gives it a distinctively modern stamp. Read full review

[The Last of the Mohicans] blends pure adventure with a compelling central romance. Read full review

The Last of the Mohicans is a striking mixture of the ersatz and the genuine. In other words, it’s vintage Hollywood. It’s also a smashingly entertaining and satisfying adventure. Read full review

Mann, who's best known for such urban crime dramas as "Vice" and "Manhunter," is equally at home whether the chase concerns a cigarette boat or a birch-bark canoe. He brings the same flair pairing action and style to The Last of the Mohicans, an attempt to resurrect and redefine the American hero. Read full review

The Last of the Mohicans is grand entertainment. Romantic, exciting, though unremittingly violent at times, it is rich in frontier lore and in its respect for the land that the conquering settlers too often take for granted. [25 Sep 1992, p.5]

The Last of the Mohicans isn't a classic, but it's one of the most exciting action pictures to come along in recent memory. Read full review

The Last of the Mohicans rarely flinches in depicting the eye-for-an-eye savagery of war. Although not explicit in the way you might expect, it nevertheless requires you to screw your courage to the sticking place. Perhaps that's a tribute to its ability to take you along its journey without much effort – real enough to elicit a visceral reaction, romantic enough to remind you it's only a movie. Read full review

The Last of the Mohicans is not as authentic and uncompromised as it claims to be -- more of a matinee fantasy than it wants to admit -- but it is probably more entertaining as a result. Read full review

Viewers engulfed by the movie's intense romance and spectacular action could leave the theater exhausted. But it's a good ride: The Last of the Mohicans creates its own vibrant world, hurling audiences into it and allowing no relief from the excitement until the end. [25 Sep 1992, p.13]

Drawing upon the novel with merciful selectivity, and adding such a contemporary flavor that the film's woodsmen often have a laid-back air, Michael Mann has directed a sultrier and more pointedly responsible version of this story. Read full review

The Last of the Mohicans comes at you like a tomahawk. Hard, fast and brutal, it slashes at your throat and just about leaves you for dead. Undeniably exciting as this definitely is, however, its impact comes at the expense of some of the gentler virtues, qualities that even top-drawer barn-burners really shouldn't ignore. Read full review

What we have here is a story out of early American history as retold by American pulp fiction, staged by a director with a sure touch for melodrama. [25 Sep 1992, p.G5]

While Last of the Mohicans is an eyeful - how could anything shot in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina not be? - it's mindless, meticulous in its externals, taking refuge from awareness by clinging to Cooper's distortions. In the end, it'll be remembered for its three S's: Stowe, Studi and the scenery. [25 Sep 1992, p.27]