Not long after watching The Pink Panther, I thought I’d watch the second Steve Martin Pink Panther movie which I was sure I had. So I got myself into the mood for it, and then I looked for it and I could not find it. Well. When I want to watch a particular movie, if I find we don’t have it (or, sometimes, we do have it and I cannot find it), well, my movie watching for the evening is done, and I fall back to reading or something. So it was only another night that I popped in this film for some reason. I don’t know where I picked it up–or if I picked it up at all–this might have been something my wife grabbed, or I might have bought it a long time ago indeed as it was wrapped in cellaphane and had a Best Buy price tag on it.
So, to briefly lay out the plot: Daniel Day-Lewis plays Hawkeye/The Deerslayer/Leatherstocking/Natty Bumpo, a frontiersman who is friends with Chingachgook and Uncas, a father/son pair who are the last of their tribe. But I get ahead of myself.
During the French and Indian War (where, unlike other wars, the French and Indians are on the same side against the English), a Colonel in the British army sends his daughters to a distant fort for safety. They’re lead into an ambush by a treacherous Indian played by the Sphinx from Mystery Men (Wes Studi, whom I could have sworn I’d recently seen in something else). Hawkeye and the Mohicans rescue the daughters (and another British officer) and lead them to their destination which turns out to be a fort under French seige whose letter seeking reinforcements and warning the colonel not to send his daughters was carried by the treacherous Indian and never delivered, obviously. The Colonel had promised the American militia that they would be released to defend their homes from marauding Indians, but the commander of the fort alters the deal. Hawkeye helps them to escape the fort but is smitten with Cora, the oldest daughter, so he remains to face justice for what he’s done. That’s hanging, by the way–it’s a bold strategy, Cotton. But the fort surrenders and the British are allowed to leave, but the Huron fall upon the leaving train and slaughter it but treacherous Magua (Studi) ambush that, too, and steal away the women and the British officer. Whom Hawkeye and the Mohicans try to rescue, but end up having to settle for revenge.
I read the book in college (and have picked up a couple more in the series since then), and I’ve got to say that the book really gives short shrift to the Mohicans and instead focuses on the spectacle and sweep of the film. It’s more historically accurate than the later (both in release and in time period) The Patriot, but the story keeps the protagonist at a bit of a distance, perhaps because of how much had to be trimmed to make it into a single film and not a trilogy.
I must have seen this on home video in the 1990s, and I can probably go another twenty or thirty years before seeing it again. Maybe if I have grandchildren who are into history. I do have another Daniel Day-Lewis film, There Will Be Blood, atop the movie cabinets, so maybe I will see that soon (wherein “soon” might be the next five years).
Oh, and the film soundtrack/score: My beautiful wife loves it. But I dunno. The parts used in the film, which generally is the first number of seconds or minute from each piece/movement, basically sound the same. Maybe it’s a motif or theme repeated, but the whole movements or pieces vary enough to make it listenable as a whole. But I was not impressed.
There Will Be Blood is ponderous and pointless. I regret watching it.
It definitely struck me as one of those Important movies that came out with a Serious actor that wins some awards and then is forgotten a couple years later.