Evening Standard from London, Greater London, England • 32

32 THURSDAY NOVEMBER 1992 HERE are 66 stunt artists to start with That tells you something about the scale of writer-director Michael Mann's THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS (Cert 12 112 mins) There is a sense of virgin territory created marvellously out of a -pocket hanky-sized tract of Old America in North Carolina There is the siege of an 18th century fortress that blooms in the night sky like a fireworks display diver white and grey with WALKER hell what 8 the word for it? Yes epic The great thing about this movie boldly and rightly given a Certificate so as not to deny any child the right to be thrilled transported and momentarily terrified is that you come away from it remembering not just performances scenery photography literacy of speed! and fluency of feeling but rarer still an experience of something alive and present despite its literary origins in James Fenimore book and the historical distance of another America which the great powers of Europe were still fighting each other to possess The hero is Hawkeye the white boy of Irish parentage reared by Mohican Indians who betrays his instincts to pufife of cannon fire There is a feeling of continental destiny as two great European armies English and French with their Red Indian allies clash in the New World with formal courtesies and chauvinist determination There is grace and poetry and action' and suspense and that clum- sily named but oh so rare thing called historical verisimilitude about a film that restores to the screen what it used to do best: grandeur of scale intimacy of people generosity of emotion a subtext of saga and legend Oh No man's scalp is safe from Wes Studt as a Huron chief A CLASSIC BURBERRY'S RAINCOAT WITH A CLASSIC GIFT which the Brits march in vulnerable ranks of parade-ground correctness suddenly extrudes its hordes of war-whooping near-naked Huron Indians who seem able to slip through solid matter like revenant spirits A canoe-chase oh the relief of notbeing on four-wheels! becomes a white-water frenzy in which heart pounds to the desperate beat of the paddles The walls of Fort William Henry the English citadel created by production de-' signer Wdf Krueger on a 38-acre escarpment are rent by fire from the French batteries with a Godlike force that seems to derive from the Old Testament as well as the new artillery The cast rises to the ambitions Madeleine Stowe and Jodhi May as the sisters Cora and Alice show that the feminine conventions of the time still left room for moral and physical courage Steven Waddington as fiance lives obstinately by the military rule-book until called to die bravely at the stake Maurice Roeves as the English colonel grimly wraps opportunism in patriotic gore Patrice Chereau as the silver-tongued General Montcalm shows good manners can carry the day if backed by French gunfire Outstanding is the tribe of actors playing American Indians The minority-rights activist Russell Means is adoptive father another propagandist for the Redskin cause Dennis Banks is a tribal chief whose wisdom makes judgments look like soft options But best of all is Wes Studi a Cherokee who plays the Huron warlord Magua in whose presence no man dare calf his scalp his own He is a villain yet the movie allows him a context of tribal injustices to validate his obsessive pursuit of retribution It is a violent film Yet except for a fleeting shot of a Redcoat losing his pigtail to a tomahawk a glimpse of what passes for a human heart being lifted aloft as a battle trophy and a suggestion of throat-cutting (below the frame of the screen) it doesn't revel in bloody revulsion EITHER is The Last of the Mohicans a revisionist catalogue of apologies to the Redskins It takes the line of historical understanding making manifest the subjugation that all mest entails but not for-the virtues of love humanity and self-sacrifice that go with pioneering and used to go with Hollywood picture-making irony and maybe significance too in the fact that Hollywood rife with formula sex and violence has had to turn back to an American classic written more than 150 years ago in order to sing us a song of national innocence as it is reshaped by historical experience help the English then recovers his sense of upbringing in time to forge his own destiny (and that of Cora the cotand's daughter) But Hawkeye the only protagonist Mann and his co-screenwriter Christopher Crowe populate the film with outstanding performers from an Anglo-French-Red Indian company cast as gallant but boneheaded Redcoats romantic but resourceful women chivalrous but sly French commandants barbaric but injustice-smarting Redskins To impose himself on this churning torrent of incidents and Individuals Hawkeye has to be an actor of presence and power Daniel Day-Lewis is such a one He has shown his shape-shifter talent in other forms from the Edwardian prig in Room With a View to the paraplegic Irish writer in My Left FootHe is the chameleon man of the movies But here he is in all his natural glor the only international he: to Caine and Connery come from these shores in the last decade IS Hawkeye is in-deed a breed apart Physical-ity emanates from him but with sensibility and a reserve of mystery He runs as if preparing for takeoff He takes to land and water with amphibian grace He projects so direct an attractiveness that a girl he walks towards retreats from! He knows his own mind and speaks it Reminded that he is a subject of the king he answers with laconic casualness: know that Tm subject to much at He startles one the way OUvier used to do by pouncing suddenly on an ordinary word like and making it his own by an unexpected twist of speech He can shoot a wordless look of love at a maiden or chastely reclining beside her under the wide night sky spin a fable about the creation and how the stars were sucked like milk from the breasts of the earth-mother that no Hollywood-bred star could tackle with the same innocence of tongue Where an American player would have homed in on the machismo element this Brit marries sensitivity to sinew As well as a body he gives Hawkeye a soul Michael Mann is an underrated director he made Manhunter the first and vastly superior Hannibal Lecter thriller With his photographer Dante Spinotti he splices visual ravishment into visceral excitement The Arcadian forest through Sv t' Classic Coat £225 Trenchcoat £275 There has never been a better time to purchase the finest raincoat From November 1st we introduce a range of coats at special prices With each purchase there will be a gift of your choice from a wide selection of polo shirts knitwear leather goods or silk squares There has never been a better time to get to know the original raincoat 1 Please bring along thia advertisement to claim your gift Burberrys SS SSS or LONDON If 18-22 Haymarket London SW1Y 4DQ 165 Regent Street London W1R 8AS 2 Brampton Road Knighcsbridge London SW1X 7PB.