The Last of the Mohicans (1992)
While this film is set during the French and Indian War, it is simmering with the tensions that would eventually lead to Revolution. As Indian raids intensify and the French army marches through upstate New York, the colonist feel increasingly abandoned by an empire more invested in protecting its interests than its people. Perfectionist director Michael Mann takes the framework of James Fennimore Cooper’s novel, shovels in a love story and uses it to tell the story of an embryonic nation realizing its need to stand on its own two feet. It also turned intense Anglo-Irish character actor Daniel Day-Lewis into a sex symbol.
