Plot
During the French and Indian War in 1757, Mohican Chingachgook (Russell Means) with his sons, Uncas (Eric Schweig) and adopted white Nathaniel Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis), visit the Cameron frontier household. Friend Jack Winthrop (Edward Blatchford) tells them he is gathering militia for the British army. General Webb agrees to grant the militia leave if their homes are attacked, in return for their reinforcement of Colonel Edmund Munro (Maurice Roëves) at Fort William Henry. Newly arrived Major Duncan Heyward (Steven Waddington) and native Magua (Wes Studi) are tasked with escorting Munro's daughters, Cora (Madeleine Stowe) and Alice (Jodhi May), from Albany to their father at the fort. Duncan wishes to marry Cora, but she professes friendship only. Magua leads the group into an ambush by his Huron party. Hawkeye, Uncas and Chingachgook come across the attack as Magua escapes and save Duncan, Cora and Alice, deciding to escort them to the fort.
Along the way the Cameron home is found razed and its occupants murdered. The group arrive to find the fort under siege by the French, but sneak in. Munro is surprised at his daughters’ arrival; he had warned them to stay away, but Magua schemed to reunite the family. The fort can only hold for three more days, so a messenger is sent to General Webb for help. To Duncan's chagrin, Cora and Hawkeye are drawn to each other, so he resentfully denies that the razing of the Cameron homestead took place. Munro therefore refuses to let Jack and the militia leave to defend their homes. Hawkeye secretly helps them escape anyway, but is arrested for sedition and sentenced to hang despite Cora's pleas. The French General Montcalm (Patrice Chéreau) generously offers all in the fort safe passage to Albany if they surrender and vow to never fight again. Munro reluctantly accepts after Montcalm shows Webb’s intercepted message, showing that no aid is forthcoming.
Magua berates Montcalm for making peace, revealing that his village was destroyed and his children killed by Munro's troops, assisted by the Mohawk; though he regained his freedom under Mohawk captivity, his wife remarried believing he was dead. Montcalm, though intending to honor the terms, would not mind if Magua were to deal with the British. The retreating British soldiers and their families are ambushed by Magua's men. Magua cuts out Munro's heart from his body, but not before promising to kill Munro's daughters to extinguish his line. Hawkeye, Cora, Alice, Uncas, Chingachgook, Duncan and a few others flee in canoes across Lake George and down a river to a cave behind a waterfall, but Magua and his men are soon upon them. For their safety, Hawkeye urges Cora and her sister to submit if captured and promises he will find them later, then leaps with his father and brother down the waterfall. Magua takes Duncan and the two sisters to a Huron village.
Magua negotiates his captives’ fate with the sachem when they are interrupted by the arrival of an unarmed Hawkeye. With Duncan translating in French, Hawkeye convinces the chief that Magua is acting for his own interests like the colonial powers, rather than for the good of the tribe. The chief decides that Cora is to be burned alive to atone for Magua's children, gives Alice to replace Magua’s wife so that both bloodlines can continue and orders Duncan's return to the British to placate them. Hawkeye is released in recognition of his bravery, but pleads to take Cora’s place. Duncan deliberately mistranslates, sacrificing himself instead so Hawkeye and Cora can escape, whilst Magua curses the sachem and departs with Alice and his men. From a safe distance, Hawkeye mercifully shoots Duncan as he is burned alive.
Uncas, who had cared for Alice throughout, races ahead to intercept Magua's band, killing several warriors before engaging Magua. Magua kills him, then drops his body off the cliff. Rather than join Magua, Alice follows Uncas by jumping to her death. Seeing this, an enraged Hawkeye and Chingachgook set upon the Hurons and slay several. Chingachgook kills Magua, avenging his son. After a ritual for Uncas with Cora and Hawkeye, Chingachgook announces that he is the last of the Mohicans.
Read more about this topic: The Last Of The Mohicans (1992 film)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
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And providently Pimps for ill desires:
The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
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—John Dryden (1631–1700)