Metacritic reviews

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.

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]

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.