Tombstone

“A lot of people, a lot of studios, wished Tombstone would just die. Kevin Costner was gearing up his film Wyatt Earp at the same time, and it would have been easier if we’d just gone away. But Tombstone had a lot of things going for it. First and foremost it had me.” – Kurt Russell

Almost every year there seems to invariably be two similarly-themed films duking it out for box office supremacy. One does better than the other because it comes out first or has a big movie star in it or is just better in quality. In 1989, The Abyss out performed two other underwater alien films, Leviathan and Deepstar Six. A few years later, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) outperformed Robin Hood (1991) thanks to the movie star power of Kevin Costner. In the late 1990s, you had the competing asteroid disaster films with Armageddon (1998) vs. Deep Impact (1998) and the rival erupting volcano thrillers, Dante’s Peak (1997) and Volcano (1997).

In the mid-‘90s, Hollywood was at it again with competing Wyatt Earp biopics: Tombstone (1993) and Wyatt Earp (1994). Despite the former having an earlier release date, the latter featured Costner in the title role of the legendary lawman and with respected screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan behind the camera. In addition, Tombstone was plagued with production problems as its director was fired early during principal photography only to be replaced by another with almost no prep time. Amazingly, against the odds, Tombstone was not only made but won the box office showdown over the much longer, slower-paced Wyatt Earp. Audiences preferred the more entertaining, action-packed Tombstone with its fantastic cast of character actors led by none other than Kurt Russell. His film delivered the goods, plain and simple. Despite the absolute critical drubbing it received upon its theatrical release, it should be regarded among the best westerns of the ‘90s alongside the likes of Unforgiven (1992) and Dead Man (1995).

Based loosely on historical events that took place in the American west during 1881-1882, Tombstone opens with a bang as a group of outlaws known as the Cowboys, by the red sashes they wear, ride into a small town and slaughter a large number of men because they killed two of their own. The Cowboys are led by a man named Curly Bill (Powers Boothe). He’s such a badass that he kills a groom on his wedding day and then laughs when his right-hand man Johnny Ringo (Michael Biehn) guns down the priest who performed the ceremony. These are clearly bad men not to be messed with.

Meanwhile, Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell), his two brothers, Virgil (Sam Elliott) and Morgan (Bill Paxton), and their wives arrive in Tombstone. They are retired lawmen looking to settle down and make some money in this boom town. We are soon introduced to Wyatt’s friend, Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer), a sickly-looking gambler suffering from tuberculosis but still possessing a deadly sense of humor and an even deadlier way with guns. The Earps quickly learn the lay of the land: there’s plenty of money to be made, just don’t cross the Cowboys. Wyatt stakes his claim early on when he takes over a hard luck gambling joint and like that the Earps are in business with Doc soon joining them.

It doesn’t take long for Curly Bill to cross paths with Wyatt and Johnny Rico to have words with Doc – in Latin to be exact. It becomes readily apparent that these two are each other’s opposites. Rico shows off his incredibly fast and dexterous gunhandling skills to which Doc counters by mimicking Rico’s demonstration only in mocking fashion with the mug he drinks alcohol from. A local actress named Josephine Marcus (Dana Delany) catches Wyatt’s eye. He’s not only captivated by her beauty but intrigued by her assertive nature and zest for life. Wyatt’s opium-addicted shrew of a wife Mattie Blaylock (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson) doesn’t stand a chance against this free spirit.

Trouble arises when Curly Bill, high as a kite on opium, shoots and kills the town’s kindly old marshal forcing Wyatt to knock the outlaw out. He throws him in jail but not before making enemies with the rest of his buddies. The town’s mayor (Terry O’Quinn) puts pressure on the Earps to become lawmen once again by appealing to their innate moral sense of right and wrong. Pretty soon Virgil becomes the new marshal and Morgan his deputy, much to Wyatt’s chagrin. He doesn’t want to get involved, he’s just interested in making money and keeping a low profile. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that there’s going to be a showdown between the Earps and the Cowboys.

Once Wyatt dusts off his Peacemaker revolver, you just know that the killings are gonna start soon. This culminates in the famous shoot-out at the OK Corral. There’s a fantastic shot, courtesy of the late-great cinematographer William A. Fraker, of the Earps and Doc walking down main street with a burning building behind them as they confront some Cowboys. This gunfight is hardly a glorious one and afterwards Wyatt and Morgan deeply regret what happened. They never wanted things to go this far.

Naturally, retribution for what the Earps have done comes on a dark and stormy night (there’s one thing you can say about this film is that it’s not subtle). By the end of it, one Earp is dead and one seriously wounded, all at the hands of the Cowboys. As the cliché goes, “this time its personal,” and the once reserved Wyatt becomes a vessel of vengeance with those immortal words, “You called down the thunder, well now you got it!” With Doc by his side and a few ex-Cowboys backing them up, Wyatt systematically decimates the outlaws’ ranks, working his way up to the food chain to the inevitable showdown with Curly Bill and Johnny Rico. Russell was drawn to this film because it took a look at what happened to Earp after the gunfight at the O.K. Corral and showed a darker side of the man. Russell was fascinated in exploring the aftermath of this famous fight: “Wyatt Earp went on a serious binge of killing. There is no way to determine now how many people he actually did kill, but it was a lot. He was a man who tilted over the edge. He went nuts. Something inside him finally broke.”

How great is Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday? He plays the man as a genteel southern gentleman armed with dry wit and a lightning fast quick draw. He gets the lion’s share of the film’s most memorable lines and they are often little asides, like when he beats a clearly frustrated man at poker and says upon revealing his cards, “Isn’t that a daisy?” And then, when the man insults him, Doc, in a mock-hurt tone, wonders if they’re still friends and says, “You know Ed, if I thought you weren’t my friend, I just don’t think I could bear it.” It’s the way Kilmer says these words that makes the scene so much fun to watch. You can just tell that he’s having a blast with this role as evident by how deeply immersed he is in Doc on every level, like the way he carries himself in a given scene, his languid body language, his sickly pallor, and his cultured accent. The combination of all these elements results in one of the most memorable takes on Doc Holliday ever committed to film.

Faced with playing off such a flamboyant character, Kurt Russell wisely plays straight man to Kilmer. Initially, he plays Wyatt as a genial enough fellow, interested in making money and avoiding any trouble that might lead to him putting on a lawman’s badge again. However, that doesn’t mean he’s a pushover either as evident in the scene where he bitch slaps an arrogant gambler (an obnoxious Billy Bob Thornton) at a down-on-its-luck saloon and then browbeats him: “You gonna do something or just stand there and bleed?” Russell has that fantastic no-nonsense stare that lets you know right away that Wyatt means business. However, as he gets dragged into a feud with the Cowboys his demeanor changes and he becomes a more stoic figure until going into full killing mode, transforming into a frightening force of nature. It is refreshing to see that Russell is not afraid to show the darker aspects of Wyatt and was able to do so thanks to the success of Clint Eastwood’s dark, complicated western, Unforgiven.

It’s something of an understatement to say that Tombstone’s cast is an embarrassment of riches and a treasure trove for fans of character actors. Where else do you get to see Stephen (Manhunter) Lang threaten Sam (The Big Lebowski) Elliott? Or see Jason Priestley swoon over Billy (Titanic) Zane? Or have Michael (Aliens) Biehn sparring verbally in Latin with Val (Heat) Kilmer? Powers Boothe, one of the great, under-appreciated character actors, plays Curly Bill with gusto and bravado which is in sharp contrast to Biehn’s quiet intensity as Johnny Rico who is no crazed, one-dimensional baddie – he quotes from the Bible and speaks Spanish and Latin fluently.

The screenplay by Kevin Jarre pushes all the right buttons as we quickly identify with the Earps and want to see the Cowboys get their much-deserved comeuppance. It is also full of colorful period lingo: “Skin that smoke wagon and see what happens,” or “I’m getting tired of your gas. Now jerk that pistol and go to work.” The dialogue absolutely crackles with energy and it has the perfect cast to bring it vividly to life so that it leaps off the page. Tombstone is one of those rare films where you can see the actors enjoying their roles because they finally have juicy parts that they can sink their teeth into.

In 1989, first-time writer/director Kevin Jarre was going to make Tombstone with Kevin Costner but then the actor decided that he wanted to do a film about Wyatt Earp and not Tombstone. Producer James Jacks championed Jarre’s screenplay for the production company he formed in partnership with Sean Daniel, former production chief at Universal Pictures. Jacks originally approached Universal but they deemed the project too risky and rejected it. In January 1992, Jarre’s script about Earp was on verge of being made into a film but it was almost shelved when Costner announced his own Earp film to be written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan for Warner Brothers. At the time, Jarre claimed that Costner’s move was “an attempt to crush my picture.” Perhaps not so coincidentally, Brad Pitt, who was excited about starring in Tombstone, backed off once Costner’s project was announced.

Jarre’s script was ready to shoot, all he needed was a cast. However, Michael Ovitz’s powerful Creative Artists Agency was backing Costner and Tombstone’s producers, Jacks and Daniel, could not attract a movie star big enough to get a Hollywood studio interested in backing the film. Pitt was represented by Ovitz’s agency and at the time Jacks said, “CAA is telling people our movie won’t happen.” Fortunately, they caught a break when Kurt Russell’s old agent at William Morris slipped a copy of the script to the actor who was now at CAA. He agreed to play Earp and this attracted the likes of Val Kilmer, Sam Elliott, Michael Biehn, and Powers Boothe. Russell then took the project to financier Andrew Vajna’s Cinergi Productions, which had a distribution deal with Disney. Vajna agreed to make the film for $25 million. Originally, Jarre and Russell wanted Willem Dafoe to play Doc Holliday but Disney refused to release it with him in the role because of portrayal of Jesus Christ in the controversial Martin Scorsese film, The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), and told the film’s producers to cast Kilmer instead.

Filming began in May 1992 on location in Mescal, Arizona. First-time director Jarre got into trouble early on. Reportedly, he wouldn’t think visually and refused advice from the film’s veteran cinematographer and six-time Academy Award nominee William Fraker. Sam Elliott remembers, “I knew from the third day Kevin couldn’t direct. He wasn’t getting the shots he needed.” According to Jacks, Jarre was “shooting in an unconventional old-fashioned, John Ford style, with very few close-ups.” Some cast and crew members felt that the tight shooting schedule didn’t help, especially for an inexperienced director like Jarre. Jacks realized that Jarre wasn’t very well-prepared when the filmmaker would disappear for hours to ride his horse. This left the cast and crew feeling abandoned. In retrospect, Jacks regretted not insisting that Jarre direct a couple of smaller films before “attempting something as demanding and complicated as a big western.”

Actor Michael Rooker felt that “from the beginning they allotted too little time to do this movie.” In August 1992, after four weeks and with Russell and Fraker ready to quit, Vajna fired Jarre. Still committed to the film, the cast and crew stuck together and were determined to finish what they started. Russell called Sylvester Stallone (they had worked together on Tango and Cash) and told him he needed a director to come in on short notice. Stallone recommended George P. Cosmatos who he had worked with on Rambo: First Blood, Part 2 (1985). Cosmatos arrived on location with only three days of preparation and Russell told him, “I’m going to give you a shot list every night, and that’s what’s going to be.” Russell and Val Kilmer met with Cosmatos and came to an understanding: Cosmatos would focus on finishing the film on schedule while Russell trimmed the unwieldy script and oversee the 85 cast members.

Russell and Jacks cut down the script’s scenes on a daily basis, eliminating 30 pages so that the focus was on the relationship between Earp and Doc Holliday. From the beginning, Russell realized that these pages needed to be taken out but Jarre failed to do this and when he was fired Russell was the only one left who knew the script. In an attempt to gain the trust of the cast, Russell reduced his part in the script. Cosmatos agreed with these changes but some castmates weren’t too happy with having their parts reduced. Elliott said, “Initially, the screenplay was one of the best I’ve ever read. If I was given the screenplay as it is now, I’d have to pass on it.” He felt that Russell and Jacks, “eliminated the connective tissue, took the character development out.” According to Kilmer, Jarre’s original script had a subplot and a story told for every main character and none of them made it into the final film.

Cosmatos ended up reshooting almost the entire film with only 15 bits and pieces shot by Jarre making it into the final cut. The veteran journeyman director brightened the film’s color palette and added an opening Mexican wedding/massacre sequence as well as two action montages in the last half hour. His working methods resulted in two script supervisors and half the art department leaving for other jobs, quitting or being fired. According to production designer Catherine Hardwicke, “He was demanding. Some people freaked out.” In frustration, Fraker quit three times. At one point, he got into a screaming match with Cosmatos and Jacks intervened, persuading the cinematographer to stay.

Principal photography finished on August 29, 1992 after 88 days. After the dust settled, the film had gone $2-3 million over budget. The filmmakers had to rush through post-production in order to make the Christmas Day opening mandated by Disney. Russell said, “I don’t know if Kevin would have been able to realize the film he had in his mind. We might still be shooting his movie. I helped him by making sure we got the movie made.”

Tombstone received overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics. The New York Times’ Stephen Holden wrote, “Tombstone is, finally, a movie that wants to have it both ways. It wants to be at once traditional and morally ambiguous. The two visions don't quite harmonize.” In his review for the Washington Post, Richard Harrington wrote, “A major problem throughout the film is the opting for style over substance, whether in terms of dark visuals or stark dialogue ... But too much of Tombstone rings hollow. In retrospect, not much happens and little that does seems warranted.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “C-“ rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “A preposterously inflated 135 minutes long, Tombstone plays like a three-hour rough cut that's been trimmed down to a slightly shorter rough cut.” USA Today gave the film one and a half stars and wrote, “Director George Cosmatos brings nothing new to this Wyatt Earp saga except leftover bullets from previous films Cobra and Rambo: First Blood Part II.” In his review for the Globe and Mail, Geoff Pevere wrote, “Forget shifting zeitgeists or the decline of American idealism. What's really killing westerns are bloated, free-range turkeys like Tombstone.”

Critics need to lighten up and enjoy Tombstone for what it is: a fun, popcorn movie that is all about mustaches: the Earps all sport big bushy ones that threaten to consume their faces, while the bad guys all sport thinner ones with goatees or beards. The wild card in all of this is Doc who sports a thin mustache suggesting that he’s a bad guy as he does cheat at cards, but he’s also Wyatt’s friend and is very loyal to him and his brothers, even willing to back them up at the OK Corral gunfight. Ultimately, Tombstone is about male friendship, in particular the intense and unusual bond between Doc and Wyatt. Early on, it takes on a playful tone as Doc has some fun with Wyatt’s obvious attraction to Josephine. Even though they aren’t related by blood they might as well be brothers as they’re willing to die for each other. They don’t verbalize it but it’s all in the eyes and this is nicely realized by Kilmer and Russell. It’s hard not to be moved by the final scene between their two characters.

When all was said and done, Kevin Costner’s Wyatt Earp cost $60 million and was unable to recoup it as Tombstone came out first and stole its thunder, grossing a respectable $55 million. To add insult to injury, Disney released Tombstone on home video right before Wyatt Earp’s theatrical release and it did strong rental business. Tombstone is an epic western that has all the right ingredients: stoic lawmen, dastardly outlaws, rousing montages, beautiful women, angry proclamations, emotional death bed speeches, and, of course, exciting shoot-outs. George P. Cosmatos’ direction is no frills – strictly meat and potatoes which is just right for this straightforward tale. While the gun battles are noisy and chaotic, you always know where everyone is and what’s going on. It may not be a brooding meditation on violence like Unforgiven or push the boundaries of the genre like Dead Man, but Tombstone is an unabashed crowd pleaser in the classic western tradition.

Little Big Man

Many film critics consider the last "golden age" of American cinema to be the 1970's. They cite a steady decline in the quality of studio films during the 1980’s and 1990’s, and the emergence of the American independent film scene as the most important indicators of this deterioration. And to a certain degree this may be true. The '70s saw a wonderful trend of studios taking chances on risky films that often featured controversial subject matter or a departure from standard Hollywood stereotypes (i.e. opting for a downbeat ending as opposed to a happy one). A great example of a film from this decade that embodies a willingness to push the envelope of convention is Arthur Penn's Little Big Man (1970), an endlessly fascinating and entertaining film that contrasts the harshness and violent nature of the frontier where a man defines himself through violence, by inserting a protagonist who instead defines himself through predominantly non-violent actions. Herein lies the brilliance of Little Big Man, a film that takes an existing genre like the western and consistently subverts our expectations at every turn.

           

The film begins with an intriguing opening: it is present time and a snobby scholarly type is trying to interview a very elderly man (Dustin Hoffman) who claims to be the only white man to have survived the infamous Battle of Little Big Horn, also known as Custer's Last Stand. The film then proceeds to recount Jack Crabb's colorful past in a series of flashbacks. Right from the first one we are acutely aware that this is not going to be the usual western. Penn's camera does a slow pan over a beautiful, scenic grassy field. This idyllic scene is quickly shattered as the camera continues its pan and we are struck by a rather primitive, horrific sight: a dead man spread eagle, covered in blood. This is soon followed by more bodies and burnt out carriages, the remains of a settler encampment massacred by Native American Indians. This rather unromantic portrayal of the Old West is only the beginning of a scathingly critical look at the conventions and the mythology of the western.

           

Jack Crabb and his sister Caroline are the only survivors of this skirmish and are soon found by a Cheyenne Indian who takes the two back to his people. After Jack's sister escapes, he is soon adopted by the Cheyenne who don't turn out to be brutal savages but actually quite the opposite. They are a thoughtful, noble people that are finding their way of life being rapidly wiped out by the white man. In an interesting turn, the Cheyenne refer to themselves as "human beings" and their humanity becomes readily apparent in their quick acceptance of Jack and the willingness to teach him their ways and customs. Ironically, they don't view white men as "human beings" and this becomes evident in the white man’s harsh treatment of not only Native American Indians but themselves as well.

The film follows Jack through the various stages of his life where he not only learns valuable lessons about life and the world but also meets an intriguing assortment of characters that appear and reappear at crucial moments in his life. The first three phases of Jack's life reveal the tried and true stereotypes inherent in the western. These archetypes are parodied in order to expose how hollow and outdated they are.

Jack's first phase, a religious one, sees him under the dubious tutelage of Mrs. Pendrake (Faye Dunaway), a God-loving woman who, as it turns out, is into more "sinful" pursuits than her virginal attire would suggest. This revelation exposes Jack to the double standards and hypocrisy of religion – that many people rarely practice what they preach as Mrs. Pendrake so adequately demonstrates. This rather amusing episode also marks the final eradication of naiveté that might have existed in Jack.

           

From there, he hooks up with Allardyce T. Merriweather (Martin Balsam), a sleazy salesman who "tended to lose parts of himself" in retribution for his shady dealings. A left hand here, a left ear there ... more parts gradually disappear as the years pass, transforming Merriweather into a ridiculous figure who still tries to con anyone who will listen. This is Jack's con man phase as Merriweather shows him that the world has no moral order. Merriweather embodies the dark side of the capitalist dream at its most garish and lays it all out for Jack when he tells him, "Those stars twinkle in a void dear boy and the two-legged creature schemes and dreams beneath them all in vain ... The two-legged creature will believe anything. And the more preposterous the better." Merriweather preys on people and they in turn prey on him – hence his rapidly diminishing body parts.

           

Jack's next period in life sees him reuniting with his sister who rescues him from a lynch mob and ends up teaching him how to be an ace shot with a gun. So, he decides to become a professional gunslinger, complete with an all black outfit and spurs. But he ends up being a hilarious parody of a killer with his often clumsy gestures and the general way in which he carries himself. Jack is all talk and no action. He even ends up meeting the legendary gunslinger Wild Bill Hickok (Jeff Corey) who points out, "you don't have the look of murder in your eye." As if to prove his point, Wild Bill coolly guns down a man who tries to kill him. Jack realizes that Wild Bill is a real killer, while he is merely a poseur. It is a rather ironic moment as we realize that Jack has become an expert in quick draw and shooting with a gun, and yet he is unable to kill people with it.

           

Little Big Man was a film that had been a long time in the making. MGM originally wanted to make it as a multi-million dollar epic based on Thomas Berger's best-selling novel. The deal fell through and a smaller studio, Cinema Center Films, agreed to finance the film in June of 1969. Jack Richardson had originally started writing the screenplay for MGM and was subsequently replaced by Calder Willingham who took over and produced a wonderfully rich script that covered an important period of American history and one man's interaction with many of the pivotal figures of this time.

The film was budgeted at $5 million dollars with Dustin Hoffman in the lead role and Arthur Penn directing. Penn's involvement also led to the film's break with convention. He was in large part responsible for ushering in an era of ultra-violent and blood-soaked action films with his stylish feature, Bonnie and Clyde (1967) which divided critics and audiences alike but is still regarded as a landmark film for the way in which it took an existing legend and reworked it for modern sensibility. This is exactly what he did with Little Big Man. As Penn commented in an interview, one of the aims of his film "was to say, 'Wait a minute, folks, the American Indian has been portrayed in movies in the most unpleasant way possible' – I mean, pure, naked racism – 'so let's examine how we have told our own history, such as Custer's last stand.' I mean, you go out there to this day and they feed you a lot of bullshit about the great, brave Custer, but the books don't bear that out at all. He was a pompous, self-aggrandizing man." To this end, Penn's film goes a long way to imparting a real sense of humanity to the Indians while showing the white man's greed and pomposity as embodied by the vain General Custer (Richard Mulligan). The film also includes numerous scenes of Indian villages being systematically wiped out by the United States army. No one is spared in these genocidal acts: not women, not children. These scenes and the fact that the film was made during the height of the Vietnam War give the material additional meaning. Little Big Man may not only be commenting on the brutal treatment of Native Americans but also the involvement in other cultures throughout the world. One could argue that Penn's film is not only a critique of past American history but also of contemporary events as well.

Little Big Man received generally favorable reviews from critics back in the day. Roger Ebert gave it four out of four stars and wrote, “Most movie Indians have had to express themselves with an "um" at the end of every other word: ‘Swap-um wampum plenty soon,’ etc. The Indians in Little Big Man have dialogue reflecting the idiomatic richness of Indian tongues; when Old Lodge Skins simply refers to Cheyennes as ‘the Human Beings,’ the phrase is literal and meaningful and we don't laugh.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “All of these things are true, and yet Little Big Man—both in spite of and because of these failings—is an important movie by one of our most interesting directors.” Finally, Time magazine wrote, “it also accomplishes that rarest achievement, the breathing of life into an ossified art form. The '70s has its first great epic. Blood brother to the 1903 one-reeler, The Great Train Robbery, Little Big Man is the new western to begin all westerns.”

           

Little Big Man is a film that could only be made in the '70s. No major studio nowadays would be willing to back such a critical film without a big name star to attract a mass audience. At best, the film would probably have to be done on a low budget with independent backing and a cast of unknowns. One only has to look at a "revisionist Western" like Dances With Wolves (1990) to see how radical a film like Little Big Man still is. Kevin Costner's film has the same goals and intentions as Penn's film, however, where Dances With Wolves was satisfied to water down its message into a palatable, politically correct pill for all to swallow, Little Big Man refuses to compromise or sentimentalize its message or its subject. Penn's film avoids the trap of reducing Native American Indians to quaint stereotypes or romanticizing its story and its surroundings. It is this unyielding attitude that makes Little Big Man a daring, original film whose power and impact has yet to be dated by time.

The Good Shepherd

The Good Shepherd (2006) had been a long-gestating project for screenwriter Eric Roth. But then again pitching an epic biopic about the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency with a large cast of characters and a complex plot must have been a tough sell for studios interested in making crowd-pleasing blockbusters and not overly long films about people talking. Originally, Francis Ford Coppola and a score of other filmmakers were going to direct this film at various points with Leonardo DiCaprio starring. Both men dropped out for various reasons with Robert De Niro stepping up to take over directorial duties and Matt Damon as his leading man. The result is an ambitious film that spans three continents and covers the years 1939 to 1961. Critics and audiences were put off by the film’s slow, deliberate pacing and distant approach to the characters but missed the boat on a brilliant film that examines the formative years of the CIA.

The film begins in 1961 with the bungled CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba with one of the organization’s founding members Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) learning that there is a traitor in its midst, someone close to him. The film proceeds to flash back to 1939 when he was a student at Yale University. He is initiated into a secret society known as the Skull and Bones, populated by fellow privileged young men, all from families of money and influence. Wilson is approached by a representative from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (Alec Baldwin) and asked to spy on his poetry professor (Michael Gambon) whom they suspect heads up an organization sympathetic to the Nazis.

Wilson is successful and the teacher is forced to resign. This gains him access to many powerful people and opens doors to a whole other world – the ground floor to the creation of a foreign intelligence organization. It is made perfectly clear to him that it will be made up predominantly of WASPs like himself. He is also aggressively pursued by Margaret Ann Russell (Angelina Jolie), the sister of one of his classmates. She becomes pregnant and he marries her because it is expected of him and “the right thing to do.”

Wilson’s lack of personality and emotional detachment make him an ideal spy because he gives nothing away to the point where he almost doesn’t exist. Wilson internalizes everything because it is his job to keep secrets. Matt Damon gives a finely nuanced, tightly-controlled performance that is a marvel of economy. There is a stillness to the way he carries himself in this film that is in sharp contrast to the Bourne films where he plays a character that is constantly in motion. Amidst his emotionless facade exists glimmers of humanity, most notably in the form of a deaf girl named Laura (Tammy Blanchard) whom he loves but must give up once he learns that Margaret is pregnant. His time spent with Laura is one of rare moments where he shows any kind of humanity. It’s the one time in his life when he’s truly happy.

This brief relationship is the key, I think, to unlocking the character of Wilson. The end of his relationship with Laura and his marriage of convenience to Margaret symbolizes Wilson’s willingness to put his personal happiness aside for what he perceives as for the good of the country by consuming himself in service. There is a crucial moment of decision for his character: stay in the safe confines of academia with the woman he loves or marry into privilege and serve his country in the capacity of an emerging foreign intelligence service. At one point, Damon gives a look back Laura that suggests a tragic end to a life with someone who would have made him truly happy for a loveless marriage that sends him up the social and economic ladder.

The Good Shepherd originally started with screenwriter Eric Roth in 1994 when he was looking for a project after finishing his adaptation of Forrest Gump (1994). He read Norman Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost and became intrigued with the people who built the CIA. Roth talked to Francis Ford Coppola about adapting Mailer’s book because the filmmaker had optioned the rights to it with Columbia Pictures agreeing to finance the project. Roth liked the book but found the story too elaborate and he decided to do his own research (reading all about the CIA and meeting with 40 agents) including writing his own version that chronicled the organization’s creation and ended with the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Coppola decided not to do the film, claiming that he did not understand the characters due to their lack of emotion. What intrigued Roth about the early days of the CIA were the morals of the people who started the organization and what they were willing to sacrifice.

Roth asked Michael Mann to direct and, while they ended up working together on The Insider (1999) and Ali (2001), the filmmaker did get involved in The Good Shepherd. Roth eventually got Wayne Wang involved but when the studio changed hands, he was out. Philip Kaufman was also attached at one point but he too didn’t last long either. Robert De Niro first became involved with the project in 1999. Retired CIA agent Milton Bearden, who ran operations in Afghanistan in the mid-1980s, served as a technical adviser on the film. He had worked with De Niro on Meet the Parents (2000) to help him with his character who was a retired CIA agent. He agreed to take De Niro through Afghanistan to the northwest frontier of Pakistan and into Moscow for a guided tour of intelligence gathering.

John Frankenheimer was going to direct with De Niro starring. The veteran director died in 2002 and the actor stuck with The Good Shepherd because he had already put so much work into it. To keep the project going De Niro agreed to a deal that would see him either direct or star in Roth’s version if the screenwriter wrote a sequel to the years De Niro had been researching, from the Bay of Pigs to 1989’s fall of the Berlin Wall. Post-9/11 conditions made the material more relevant and a studio more willing to back the film. The Good Shepherd moved to Universal Pictures with producer Graham King agreeing to help finance it. He had a deal with Leonardo DiCaprio, who expressed interest in playing Wilson.

De Niro planned to shoot the film in early 2005 but scheduling conflicts with Martin Scorsese’s The Departed (2006) forced DiCaprio to drop out of the film. De Niro approached Matt Damon who was also making The Departed but he would be done earlier than his co-star and De Niro would only have to wait six months to do the film with him. However, Damon was scheduled to star in Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! (2009) right after The Departed but a quick phone call to the director and he agreed to delay filming in order to give Damon the opportunity to make De Niro’s film. However, when DiCaprio left so did King and his money. In June 2005, James Robinson and Morgan Creek Productions agreed to produce The Good Shepherd with De Niro’s Tribeca Films and a new deal was set up at Universal Pictures for them to distribute the final product. The budget was reduced to $90 million which meant that most of the principals, Damon included, took a significant cut in their normal salaries.

To design the production, the filmmakers brought in Jeannine Oppewall (who did amazing work recreating 1950s Los Angeles in L.A. Confidential). She did an incredible amount of research for the film that ended up filling 10-12 six-inch thick, three-ring binders. The film was shot in New York City, the Adirondack Mountains, Washington, D.C., London, and the Dominican Republic. The interiors of the CIA were built in the Brooklyn Armory, a large edifice built in 1901 for the United States Calvary. It is currently home to the U.S. Army and the National Guard. Oppewall visited the CIA’s headquarters in D.C. and did additional research and worked with Bearden to create sets for the CIA’s office, Technical Room and Communications Room. Her team tracked down the right set dressings and also found authentic teletype machines, reel-to-reel tape recorders and radios used in the CIA during that time. Bearden made sure that the filmmakers got the historical aspects correct but understood that it had to be fictionalized to a certain degree as they weren’t making a documentary.

The Good Shepherd immerses us in plenty of spy jargon, double crosses and covert operations while everyone speaks in cryptic, veiled threats. The higher up Wilson climbs, the more careful he has to be about the people he can trust. At one point, early on in his career, Wilson is given some advice: “The mental facility to detect conspiracies and betrayal are the same qualities most likely to corrode national judgment. Everything that seems clear is bent and everything that seems bent is clear. Trapped in reflections you must learn to recognize when a lie masquerades as the truth. Then deal with it efficiently, dispassionately.” As a result, he becomes increasingly paranoid and rightly so as he is privy to so many of the government’s dirty secrets while also harboring a few of his own. The film also makes it pretty clear who holds much of the power in the United States and this is beautifully underlined in a scene where Wilson meets with a powerful mafia figure (Joe Pesci) who asks him what kind of legacy does he have in the country to which Wilson replies, “We have the United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.”

Robert De Niro does a fine job with an ambitious screenplay that covers a lot of ground and a lot of characters. Close attention has to be paid to everything that is said because The Good Shepherd refuses to spell things out. It also isn’t a flashy James Bond film. De Niro said, “I like it when things happen for a reason. So I want to downplay the violence, depict in a muted way.” The film is ultimately about the dangerous nature of secrets and how they cannot only hurt a country but an individual as well. The film shows how these secrets take their toll on the country (i.e. the Bay of Pigs fiasco) and on the individual. Wilson is something of a tragic figure: a man who wanted a simple life but instead opted for one in service of his country, acting as one of its keeper of dark secrets. Along the way he lost his humanity, condemned to spend his days living in the shadows.

The Good Shepherd received mostly mixed to positive reviews from mainstream critics. The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis wrote, "The Good Shepherd is an origin story about the C.I.A., and for the filmmakers that story boils down to fathers who fail their sons, a suspect metaphor that here becomes all too ploddingly literal." However, she did like De Niro's direction: "Among the film’s most striking visual tropes is the image of Wilson simply going to work in the capital alongside other similarly dressed men, a spectral army clutching briefcases and silently marching to uncertain victory." In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan praised Matt Damon's performance: "Damon, in his second major role of the year (after The Departed) once again demonstrates his ability to convey emotional reserves, to animate a character from the inside out and create a man we can sense has more of an interior life than he is willing to let on." Time magazine’s Richard Corliss also had praise for the actor: "Damon is terrific in the role – all-knowing, never overtly expressing a feeling. Indeed, so is everyone else in this intricate, understated but ultimately devastating account of how secrets, when they are left to fester, can become an illness, dangerous to those who keep them, more so to nations that base their policies on them."

In his review for The New York Observer, Andrew Sarris wrote, “Still, no previous American film has ventured into this still largely unknown territory with such authority and emotional detachment. For this reason alone, The Good Shepherd is must-see viewing.” USA Today gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "What makes the story work so powerfully is his focus on a multidimensional individual — Wilson — thereby creating a stirring personal tale about the inner workings of the clandestine government agency.” Newsweek magazine’s David Ansen had a mixed reaction to the film. "For the film's mesmerizing first 50 minutes I thought De Niro might pull off The Godfather of spy movies ... Still, even if the movie's vast reach exceeds its grasp, it's a spellbinding history lesson.” Rolling Stone magazine’s Peter Travers felt that it was “tough to slog through a movie that has no pulse.” In his review for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw gave the film two out of five stars and criticized Damon's performance: "And why is Damon allowed to act in such a callow, boring way? As ever, he looks like he is playing Robin to some imaginary Batman at his side, like Jimmy Stewart and his invisible rabbit. His nasal, unobtrusive voice makes every line sound the same."

The Good Shepherd is eerily relevant to our post-9/11 climate with the CIA running covert prisons and reportedly torturing terrorists; the National Security Agency conducting wiretaps without warrants; and columnist Robert D. Novak’s July 2003 article revealing of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative after an administration source reportedly gave her name. All of these incidents made the material in the film more relevant. The Good Shepherd refuses to simplify its themes or resort to the frenetic style of editing that is in vogue in Hollywood and instead takes its time and immerses the viewer in a fascinating, shadowy world. This is a film that invites repeat viewings because it is rich with so many characters and intricate plot details.

For further reading, check out this link at the CIA's website which examines the historical accuracy. Not surprisingly, they don't find it too accurate.

Here's another fascinating article that takes a look at Dr. Timothy Leary's association with the CIA and their use of LSD as a truth serum of sorts.

Here is also an excellent review of the film over at Ferdy on Films, etc.

Finally, an excellent interview with De Niro, Damon and Jolie on Charlie Rose:

Michael Mann Week: The Last of the Mohicans

Hollywood’s depiction of the American West being domesticated during the Classic period is rife with stereotypes. Native Americans in John Ford films, for example, were often portrayed in two ways: as noble savages or ferocious red devils. Until recently, they were often played by white actors with their language reduced to garbled, simple, child-like speak. Not until the 1990s has their authentic languages been used in films. Most films portrayed them as vicious instead of also victims (which is what they really were in many cases) to justify the narrative that usually involved their extermination.

Coming off a cinematic hiatus of six years since Manhunter (1986) was released, Michael Mann returned with a vengeance with his robust, muscular take on The Last of the Mohicans (1992). On the surface, it seemed like a radical departure for a filmmaker known for urban crime dramas like Thief (1981), Miami Vice, and Crime Story but thematically it fits right in with his no-nonsense protagonists who are the best at what they do and are faced with a decision between their profession and the ones they love.

The Last of the Mohicans is set in 1757 during the third year of the war between England and France. Dialogueless footage of three men running through a lush, green forest plays during the opening credits. Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis), Uncas (Eric Schweig) and Chingachook (Russell Means) are hunting a large elk which Hawkeye subsequently shoots and kills with deadly accuracy. This brief sequence establishes him as a man of action and an efficient hunter. Like other Mann protagonists Hawkeye is his own man, preferring to do things on his own terms and is fiercely loyal to his family and friends.

The three men stop by a settler’s cabin that night and learn that the French army with Native Indian support is encroaching on their land. Like his settler friends, Hawkeye does not seem interested in the conflict. It is not his fight. He reinforces this belief two scenes later when a British officer (Jared Harris) tries to recruit him. Hawkeye replies, “You do what you want with your own scalp and I’ll be tellin’ us what we ought to do with ours.” This scene is significant in that we see the dynamic between Hawkeye, Uncas and Chingachook. The latter is the father of the other two men and they are clearly close to each other by the way they act towards one another. This is evident in the opening scene when they worked as a team to hunt the elk and now in this social setting. This scene is also one of domestic bliss, something that is always treasured in a Mann film and one that is also fleeting. Mohicans is no different. Hawkeye and his friends laugh and talk over dinner with a warm, inviting fire in the background. It is an intimate setting, one of safety and familiarity. It will also be the last time they will all enjoy this kind of atmosphere.

Mann’s trademark color palette is muted in Mohicans with green being the only one with any prominence. He uses the green of the forest, that Cora (Madeleine Stowe) and Alice Munro (Jodhi May) travel through on the way to be reunited with their father, Colonel Munro (Maurice Roeves) at Fort William Henry, to foreshadow the impending danger of the Indian sneak attack that will decimate the complement of soldiers protecting them and bring them in contact with Hawkeye for the first time.

The ambush shows the foolishness of the British military tactics. They take their time to form a line giving the attacking Indians ample time to take cover and then counter-attack. In a matter of moments almost all of the British troops have been killed until Hawkeye and his crew arrives and swiftly deals with these marauders with same kind of deadly efficiency. Hawkeye and Magua (Wes Studi) meet face to face for the first time in this scene as Magua narrowly misses Hawkeye with his rifle and then disappears into the forest before he can get a good shot at him. This almost unnatural exit sets up Magua as an unstoppable force of nature, like Hawkeye but only on the opposite end of the moral spectrum. The ambush establishes the quick, brutal nature of combat in the film as Mann moves away from the overtly stylish action in Thief and Manhunter towards a more realistic depiction with truly harrowing scenes of men getting scalped, stabbed and slashed. Every subsequent film Mann would make after Mohicans would depict violence in a jarring, realistic nature.

The character of Magua is fleshed out and given a chance to explain the motivation for his ruthless hatred of the English: his village was burned down, his children killed, he was taken as a slave and his wife thought he was dead and remarried. He delivers a powerful monologue to his French co-conspirator, “In time, Magua became blood brother to the Mohawk, to become free but always in his heart he’s Huron. His heart will be whole again when the day the Gray Hair and all his seed are dead.” Wes Studi delivers this speech with scary intensity that is indicative of his incredible performance throughout the film. He portrays Magua as a ferociously driven man who believes in what he is doing as much as Hawkeye does. Like Daniel Day-Lewis, Studi’s performance is very physical and he commands the screen with his intense presence due in large to his piercing eyes.

Mann is clearly sympathetic to the settlers’ plight and their decision to protect their homes instead of helping defend Fort Henry against the French, which falls to them anyway. However, it is the love story between Cora and Hawkeye that lies at the heart of this film. Aside from a few meaningful, longing looks at each other, their sudden consummation is not believable because no foundation for it has been properly established. Cora is another, strong female Mann character, like Jesse in Thief. She stands up for Hawkeye to her father when he is caught for helping some militia men desert so that they can go defend their homes. She argues Hawkeye’s case and even speaks seditious ideas in front of him. Yet, she spends a lot of the film as a damsel in distress having to be rescued by Hawkeye on at least two occasions.

Mann only betrays the realistic battle scenes once with a stylistic indulgence. When Munro and his men are ambushed by Magua’s war party. Cora is attacked and about to have her throat slashed. Hawkeye spots her and runs towards her, killing several men along the way in slow motion for what seems to take forever and reaches her long after she surely would have been actually killed. However, he gets to her just in time and dispatches her attacker. Studi remembers that during the filming of this scene there being a lot of racial tension between the actors playing the British troops and the Indian actors which also added to the intensity of the scene.

One of the most striking aspects of Mohicans is Dante Spinotti’s stunning cinematography. Mann constantly punctuates scenes with picturesque shots of the countryside: early morning fog gently rolling off a mountain range, a raging waterfall and fields of tall grass. Browns and mostly greens dominate the color scheme of this film. For the look of Mohicans, the director started with 19th century landscape painters like Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, chiaroscuro lighting, and 18th century portraits. It was Bierstadt's paintings that influenced the look of the film "in terms both of compositions and of what the place looked like," Mann has said. As he progressed, however, he realized that "objective reality outstripped me, and I brought it back to a more conservative palette. If you were an American Indian and grew up in the forest, so all you saw were brown and green."

Even more so than The Keep (1983), Mohicans feels the most un-Mann-like of any of his films. His usual iconography is subdued or non-existent. Mohicans tries to counter many of the Native American stereotypes in Hollywood films. Hawkeye is completely aligned with the Native Americans while falling in love with Cora, a white woman. Initially, the racial distinction is blurred as Hawkeye is not given priority at the beginning of the film. They are all equal for a little while. Of course, being the star, Hawkeye does become the central focus of the story. This is where Mann’s film stops being progressive and reverts back to the old stereotypes with good and bad Native Americans. While he does up the ante in terms of realistic battle scenes, his story is very middle of the road and one that typifies a big-budget Hollywood film.

Mann had long been fascinated by the period of history that Mohicans is set in but his interest in the project can be traced all the way back to his childhood. He saw the 1936 version starring Randolph Scott as Hawkeye when he was four or five-years-old at a church in his neighborhood that would show 16mm films in their basement. Mann remembered “the corollary tragedy of Uncas and Alice at the end, plus I remember the fearsomeness of Magua, and the uniqueness of the period.”

Mann first acquired the rights to Philip Dunne's 1936 screenplay of The Last of the Mohicans and wrote a story outline based on it, the Smithsonian’s 30-volume North American Indian Handbook, a diary by Bouganville, Montcalm’s aide, and Simon Schama’s essay The Many Deaths of General Wolfe in 1988. He walked into the offices of Joe Roth, then Chairman of 20th Century Fox, and Roger Birnbaum, then President of Worldwide Production, and pitched a realistic take on Mohicans. They liked the idea and green-lit the project. Marketing surveys for 20th Century Fox revealed that few moviegoers had read Cooper’s novel but were familiar with the title.

As always, Mann did a lot of research on this period of history. He realized how “revisionist James Fenimore Cooper was in 1826 when he was revising [the perception of American Indians] into noble savages [who had] their life, their culture, their territory, their commerce, who [did not] need more sophisticated folks (like Cooper and his family), to look after their interests and their land. So, it was eye-opening to do the research on the Mohicans and get to the true dimensionality of that society.” From there, Mann constructed the outer frame of the film and established “the scale of a geopolitical conflict – the ethnic and religious conflicts, the struggle of white imperialism on a grassroots level, the condition of the struggle for survival of the colonial population, and the struggle between the Euramerican and European powers and the American Indian population.” Mann studied the history of the American frontier, read diaries from the time period and consulted with historians. For the director, “the details make this movie ring true. Audiences today are more visually sophisticated. They know the real deal, and they know when they’ve been shortchanged.”

Mann was interested in developing the epic scale of the story and proceeded to juxtapose these elements with an intimate love story between Hawkeye and Cora Munro. It is this coupling that illustrates where Mann deviates from Cooper's book in specific areas. Cora was originally a mulatto and Colonel Munro wanted Heyward to marry Cora but he preferred Alice. Mann switched it so that Hawkeye and Cora fall in love and had sex. Originally, Hawkeye’s name was Natty Bumppo but Mann felt that it was “kind of a silly name” and changed it to Nathaniel Poe. He also based Major Heyward on Cooper himself.

Mann wanted acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis to play Hawkeye, which the studio was less than thrilled about. Mann remembers, “The choice I got the weirdest reaction to was when I said Daniel Day-Lewis was going to be Hawkeye in Last of the Mohicans. Because American studios didn’t know him. They said, ‘You mean that skinny guy? That short, skinny guy in a wheelchair?’ Because all he had done was My Left Foot.” His co-star Madeleine Stowe remembers that prior to doing the film Day-Lewis had just played Hamlet at the National Theatre in London and ran from the stage crying, convinced that he was talking to the ghost of his own dead father. She felt a lot of uncertainty from him until he got into the physicality of his character, then he appeared to be very confident. According to Mann, physicality is one of the important ways Day-Lewis arrived at his character’s emotional state. Day-Lewis is good as a no-nonsense Mann protagonist but, at times, his alpha male bravado veers dangerously close to John Wayne territory. He certainly looks the part with his impressive lean, muscular physique – a radical change from his role in My Left Foot (1989) – and is more than up to the task for film’s demanding action sequences.

Stowe’s agent got her to read the script for Mohicans but the actress thought that, “it was a nice action picture, I didn’t feel any particular affinity for either Cora nor the story.” Her initial reluctance to the material was based on her dissatisfaction with action films. “I was fed up with them and I initially thought that the script was just another action film dressed up as a period piece.” Stowe’s agent kept after her and she read it two more times before meeting with Mann. They talked about the film and he told her his vision of it. A week later, Stowe met with Mann again and read with Day-Lewis and Steven Waddington. That day she found out that it was Day-Lewis who had suggested to Mann that she play Cora.

Casting director Bonnie Timmerman called Russell Means and asked him if he would be interested in trying out for a major role in a major film. However, the day they wanted him to audition, he was going to a political convention in Monterrey. They worked it out so that Means could do both. However, on the day he ended up missing the audition. He got another call from Mann who asked Means to audition for a role in the film. Means remembers that Mann “had been a documentary filmmaker during the 60's and 70's and he remembered the American Indian Movement, and Dennis Banks and myself as leaders.” After four auditions, Means was cast as Chingachook.

Mann brought in Colonel David Webster, who was in charge of the Many Hawks Special Operations Camp out of Fort Bragg in Columbus, Ohio, to train the cast for a month. In addition, Day-Lewis did an extraordinary amount of research and preparation for his role. Mann sent him on a six-month course of body building and weapons training at an anti-terrorist camp followed by several weeks in the wild learning how to survive with very little. He learned to track and skin animals, build canoes, fight with tomahawks, and fire and reload twelve pound flintlocks on the run. He spent five times a week for six months training to build up his stamina and upper body. Mann and Day-Lewis actually lived in the forests of North Carolina – Mann for a week, Day-Lewis for a month. The actor spent most of his time with experts on the lives and skills of American Indians.

Mohicans started with a budget of $24 million and a 250-member crew. Other articles reported that the budget was around $33 or $40 million. The principal photography was set for two-and-half months in the forests of North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains during the Spring of 1991. Mohicans would continue Mann's uncompromising approach to controlling every aspect of the production. He leveled hills, cleared 38 acres of trees and hired 130 carpenters to build Fort Henry. To achieve the authenticity of the period everything had to be built from scratch, including designing and manufacturing the breechcloths of six different Indian peoples and building French and English ordinance.

The grueling grind of the production took its toll. The Unit Production Manager and the Transportation Director were fired. All the original department heads, with the exception of the head of sound, quit. In perhaps the most startling move, cinematographer Douglas Milsome was fired and Mann brought in his favorite director of photography, Dante Spinotti. According to Means, this angered people in the film industry and Mohicans paid for it at the Academy Awards. The non-Union crew wanted to be a Union one and went on strike a day before principal photography was supposed to start. The studio ultimately gave into their demands.

While filming at Lake James, all the American Indian extras organized themselves and went on strike because their living conditions were awful and, according to Stowe, were not being well fed. There was one bathroom for 400 extras. Actors Eric Schweig, Means, and Day-Lewis joined the extras on the picket line. Military advisor Dale Dye organized the men playing the Red Coats in the film with the intention of breaking through the strike line. As they approached Means punched the first Red Coat and knocked him down. The rest of them scattered. Dye was able to get them reorganized and then the producers stepped in and asked Means to mediate between the two sides. In Means' opinion, the awful living conditions for the American Indian extras were the fault of the assistant directors. "Michael Mann was so focused on his art that he didn't realize what his A.D.s were doing ... and what his A.D.s did was effectively demoralize everyone."

When asked about the film’s production problems Mann said, “What I will tell you, however, is that this was a really difficult picture. You warn people ahead of time that this is going to be a tough picture to do, and people say, "That's fine, I can handle that," and sometimes they can't.” The filmmaker made no apologies for his exacting attention to detail. "Everything impacts on an audience. Everything. And you can either pay attention to it or let it go and let technicians do it. To me that's wasteful." Mohicans was originally slotted for a July release but was pushed back to September to avoid stiff competition and for a better position for Academy Award nominations.

The studio marketing department promoted Mohicans as a love story in a war zone, but Mann felt that it was about human struggle, “where life is short and passion is where you can find it; you are part of a people who are disappearing and the world is changing around you.” Means was not happy with how 20th Century Fox handled the film. He had two problems with the studio. Firstly, he claims that the studio forced Mann to cut down his original version that ran two hours down to 108 minutes removing “some very pertinent scenes in there, and dialogue, that would have shown the Indians in an even better light then it already does.” Secondly, Means said that the studio targeted the over 35 crowd, selling it as a love story. “As you know, it was kind of gory and there was a lot of action. So, if they'd have pitched it to 20/35 crowd, as their primary audience, it not only would have made another 50 million off of that ... 20th Century Fox shot themselves in the foot over that film ... A classic like that and they messed around with it. It just goes to point up in Hollywood they don't know anything about Indians nor the audience that they purport to know everything about.”

According to Stowe, the studio “had huge doubts” about the film during the editing and audience test screenings who were put off by the film’s violence. She felt that Mann was under a lot of pressure from the studio to change the film. The actress saw a cut in July of 1992 and felt that the studio was wearing Mann down so she called Joe Roth and “told him how beautiful the film was, and that I was fully ready to support it, that Michael’s work was wonderful and I imagined that Daniel would feel the same. he listened quietly and read between the lines.” Mann met with the studio again and successfully fought for his cut of Mohicans.

The Last of the Mohicans was released on September 25, 1992 in 1,491 theaters grossing $10.9 million on its opening weekend. It went on to make $75 million in North America, well over its $40 million budget. In his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert felt that Mann’s film was “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.” Peter Travers, in his review for Rolling Stone, praised Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance: “The lithe Day-Lewis, more puckish than primitive despite the shoulder-length locks, is riveting. Luckily, he and the radiant Stowe can make the cornball credible – even a farewell scene at a waterfall where he vows to find her again, ‘no matter how long it takes, no matter how far.’” David Ansen also praised Day-Lewis’ performance in his review for Newsweek magazine: “This amazingly graceful actor builds his character out of body language ... He turns this 18th century action hero into a freshly imagined romantic icon ... Day-Lewis makes the most wildly heroic gesture seem natural.”

In his review for the Washington Post, Desson Howe wrote, “Whether there's a full-scale massacre of innocents, or a lover's kiss behind a raging waterfall, the movie is all expertly controlled sensation ... The battles are pyrotechnical displays of cannon fire and gleaming redcoats. Even the awesome landscape looks designed. Mann wasn't thinking story, he was thinking scheme. Keep the eyes and ears dazzled, he reasons, and the substance will follow.” Richard Schickel, in his review for Time magazine, wrote, “Above all Mann has seen to it that something spooky, suspenseful or just plain action packed happens every five minutes. In the process, he has eliminated the last traces of Cooper’s high-viscosity prose and sentiments.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “B+” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “And Mann has created a great villain in Magua, the vengeful Huron. Wes Studi, who was in Dances With Wolves, has a glowering face, all scars and furrows, that seems to be imploding with rage. At the same time, he reveals that the furious Magua is actually a thoughtful, complex man; he sees what the Europeans are doing to his people, and he despises them for it.”

The success of Mohicans not only established Mann with box office clout in the eyes of Hollywood, it also proved to be a hit with audiences and critics. More importantly, it paved the way for his next and even greater film, Heat (1995), a pet project that had been gestating for years.

Here is a clip from one of the film's exciting battle scenes: