The Last of the Mohicans (film) : good film but Day-Lewis is quite awful in it

I have never watched this film from start-to-end until yesterday if you can believe that. I don't know what happened between 1992 and now, but i just never did. I don't know why because it certainly was famous enough to have caught my eye.

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A very young Daniel Day-Lewis stars in the lead role of Hawkeye (corny, but that is really his name in this) a white guy who is best buds with the Indians in the United States during the early colonization of North America. A number of bad situations occur to the English colonists and it is only due to Hawkeye's interventions that they are spared time and time again.

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If it sounds like I am being a bit mean that is only because I am being intentionally cynical, mostly because the overall love story that the film is truly about is extremely cheesy and predictable.

I consider Daniel Day-Lewis to be one of the greatest actors alive today. His performances in recent years are second-to-none and especially in There Will be Blood, awe-inspiring. In The Last of the Mohicans he is one of the worst performers in the entire bunch. His acting seems wooden and forced almost like when Keanu Reeves was in Dracula. A vast majority of the other actors including and especially Wes Studi, who plays Magua, the main baddie in the film.

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_{This scene was particularly gripping and made the whole film worthwhile}

The movie is entertaining for sure but for me, i quickly tired of Hawkeye's magical powers (exceptional accuracy at great range with notoriously inaccurate weaponry) and the love story is dumb. The idea that Hawkeye's minions would endanger their very existence simply so he can get his girl over and over is kind of implausible and that is pretty much the entire film.

It won awards for sound and cinematography (both of which are extremely good) but there is very little mentioned about the acting or story in the halls of great movies. For me, I found this movie interesting because of the stark contrast between Day-Lewis' abilities today compared to 25 years ago. I mean it is just incredible how bad his delivery is... even in that short trailer I chuckled a few times when he talked.

The film ended up making a lot of money and that probably surprised no one since Indian films were all the rage at that point in time. If you haven't seen this movie I do recommend that you see it for the haunting soundtrack, that annoyingly implausible battles scenes, and of course the very odd bad acting from Daniel.

On a scale of "Urgh!" to "Wowsers" I award The Last of the Mohicans the overall score of......