The Last of the Mohicans (1992)

Michael Mann can be a very hit or miss director. For every Heat or Collateral, there's a Last of the Mohicans. It isn't that the film is bad necessarily, just that it's hard to like something that is missing so many parts. Great waves of plot simply wash over you with little to no emotional attachment to spur interest, leaving you with setpiece after impressive setpiece. It's like if someone made a movie of only the good parts, without anything in between to make it mean anything. Sure there's a story in this muddled, schizophrenic tale of trappers and British in Colonial America, but so little time is spent giving it context that it all collapses. This isn't a terrible film, and at times it's a fairly attractive one, but there simply isn't enough weight or heft to make this worth the time.

4 out of 10.

Note: This review is based on the 1999, 2-hour re-edit of the film. Unfortunately, it's the only version available on DVD in the US.