Most critics like The Last of the Mohicans a good deal, and they like it for the same things. Daniel Day-Lewis’s Hawkeye is praised in nearly every review as the ideal fit for the part. The battle scenes, the ambush in particular, are singled out as brutal and well staged, and the landscape photography, credited to Dante Spinotti, is admired throughout. Several reviews describe the film as old-fashioned storytelling on a grand scale with a passionate romance at its centre, and count that as a virtue.
The reservations are mostly about history and feeling. Radio Times finds some of the dialogue too contemporary; the Los Angeles Times thinks the excitement comes at the cost of emotional grounding; the New Yorker finds it solemn and silly while still enjoying it. Most agree it favours thrills over accuracy. The spread is narrow, with only one mixed notice: Collider admits the craft but says the film never came alive.