War Movie Theatre | for Fans of Classic War Films and Cinema History · Robert Hutton & Duncan Weldon - War Movies Fans

The Last of the Mohicans

·1 hr 17 min·5 clips

The Huron-village negotiation is “a negotiation conducted in three languages.”

Rob Hutton opens by joking that the podcast’s job is to make the world England. Duncan Weldon comes in right beside him. They are talking about *The Last of the Mohicans*. Rob sets the film in the woods of North America, a British fort, and a dangerous escort who is not as helpful as he first seems. Duncan answers the main question straight away: yes, it is a war film. He also says it is one of the only Seven Years’ War films. The pair then settle into why it had been so long since they last watched it. Rob remembers a VHS viewing in the early 1990s, and Duncan pauses to place his own first encounter. That gap matters because the film has stayed with both of them. They talk about how much of it remained after three decades. The attack on the column gets singled out first. So does the waterfall sequence. The final winding-road bit comes back into focus too. Those are the scenes they can still describe with some accuracy. Rob and Duncan also linger on Michael Mann’s handling of scale. They mention the film’s budget and its box-office return. The point is not just the numbers. The point is that you can see the money on the screen. The attack on the column becomes a key example of that visible expense. Once the action starts, they agree, you would not want to be anywhere near it. The conversation then turns to the village sequence with Magua, Cora, Alice, and Duncan the English officer. Magua presents his captives and seems to be offering one of them up. Hawkeye enters with a belt and walks into a set of rules that are never fully explained. They admire how the film shows the rule system without spelling it out. From there, the discussion opens out into Michael Mann’s idea that the film is about a clash of three cultures: Europeans, Native Americans, and the colonists. The conversation stays alert to power, movement, and the strange confidence of the film’s storytelling, and it keeps circling back to the fact that the movie is excellent. They close by thanking one another and the listeners, then tee up a future episode chosen because someone sent a furious WhatsApp that same morning.

As heard by us

A war-film conversation that keeps returning to the movie's scale, set pieces, and clash of cultures.

Rob Hutton and Duncan Weldon treat this episode of The Last of the Mohicans as a war film first, and the case for it is plain enough. They start with the joke about making the world England, then settle into what still works after all these years: the scale on screen, the $40…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

If you want The Last of the Mohicans discussed with wit, this is your sort of afternoon.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from War Movie Theatre | for Fans of Classic War Films and Cinema History