This Dork Reporter is a long­time fan of direc­tor Michael Mann, count­ing Heat, The Insider, and Col­lat­eral among his favorite films. But I still can’t find much love for what is prob­a­bly his most pop­u­lar movie, The Last of the Mohi­cans, which seems to lack his typ­i­cally intense focus and clar­ity. Based on the James Fen­i­more Cooper novel, it falls prey to the some­time fate of lit­er­ary adap­ta­tions: fail­ure to cap­ture a nar­ra­tive too big to fit into fea­ture film length. It’s not until the long chase sequence where it truly becomes a movie, and Mann engages his superla­tive skills in explor­ing char­ac­ter through elab­o­rately staged action, as he did even more so with the extra­or­di­nary down­town L.A. shootout in Heat.

Please don’t call me Natty Bumppo

The most inter­est­ing thing about The Last of the Mohi­cans is that the appar­ent star Daniel Day-Lewis is not actu­ally the title char­ac­ter or the focus of the story. Hawk­eye pos­sesses many names (born Nathaniel Poe and also known as Natty Bumppo), but one of them is not the title of the novel or film. If I’m not mis­taken, Chin­gach­gook (Rus­sell Means) doesn’t speak a word until the very end, which also hap­pens to be the end of his people.

What­ever hap­pened to Made­line Stowe?

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

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