Early in "The Last of the Mohicans," we see pioneer Natty Bumppo sprinting through the woods of upstate New York, flintlock rifle in hand. The light is dappled, the deer are leaping, and the whole scene is actually being shot on the parklands of a Vanderbilt mansion in the heart of North Carolina. Poor Nathaniel doesn't have any real woods to roam anymore. Instead, he and his Mohican companions are trapped in a contrived, expensive prison: a brainless, phony, bombastic sell-out that reeks of everything evil in Hollywood. It is a depressing piece of work.

Writer-producer-director Michael Mann's biggest previous accomplishment was producing "Miami Vice," and it shows. The movie is visually self-indulgent: every vista is sweeping, every valley is shrouded in mist, every stream plunges impressively down a rock face. Any minute, you expect to see those damn flamingos. The soundtrack is equally overblown, with swelling orchestration to hammer every point home. There are no quiet bits; there is no restraint whatsoever. If "Dances With Wolves" was masturbatory, "The Last of the Mohicans" experiments with autoerotic asphyxiation. Motorhead, playing Wagner, would be more subtle.

The story, in brief, is this: Natty Bumppo and his two Mohican companions, Chingachgook and Uncas, help an English officer, Duncan, escort two young maidens through the wilderness during the French and Indian War. In the novel by James Fenimore Cooper, romance blossoms between the officer and the younger woman, and between Uncas and the elder. To avoid shocking his readers with miscegenation, Cooper gave the elder just the tiniest trace of Black blood. This racist attitude so shocked our modern screenwriters that they decided to make make Natty the romantic lead instead of Uncas. So the central romance is now white-on-white, and the Mohican is nearly written out of his own story. There may be a moral here, but I would rather not know it.

Cooper's Natty was in his forties and very low-key; he liked to hang out with Indians and shoot a deer now and then. Not very marketable. The new-style Natty Bumppo (Daniel Day-Lewis) has had so many heroic stereotypes packed into him that he seems nearly schizophrenic. New Natty is young and hot-blooded; he makes speeches about independence from England (at a time when dupes like George Washington were still supporting the Crown), schmoozes with settlers and isn't averse to clasping a woman in his arms and breathing heavy. Day-Lewis alternates between agitation and smugness, not unlike Dylan on "90210". He's handsome, and his hair is flowing, and he's really cute in buckskin trousers. But make no mistake, the real Natty Bumppo would have whipped his callow ass without breaking a sweat.

Madeleine Stowe, as Natty's love Cora, shows appropriate brains and spirit for her part. But she's saddled with horrible lines. America, she tells Natty, "is more deeply stirring in my blood than any imagining could possibly have been." This, right after she's seen her entire retinue slaughtered by marauding Hurons. "The whole world's on fire," she tells him later. Cooper was a notoriously bad writer of dialogue, but even he couldn't have written stuff this awful. "I will find you!" Natty assures Cora, "No mater how long it takes, no matter how far, I will find you!" Really, now. Maybe Uncas was lucky to get written out.

At least he doesn't take it on the chin the way Duncan does. In the film's world, the British are all arrogant dunderheads, bumbling through the woods in immaculate red coats. So the man who was a romantic lead in the novel is here a pudgy cartoon, barking orders and pressing unwanted affections on Cora. He gets crucified over a fire by the Hurons, and nobody minds.

Not that anyone could, by that point. "The Last of the Mohicans" is incessantly and cheerfully violent, frequently in slow motion. Muskets crack and tomahawks fly. Dripping scalps are brandished. The music swells. A heart is cut out. Two hundred soldiers and 200 Indians writhe together in mortal combat, all on the screen at the same time, By the time that Uncas meets his tragic end, mortally wounded and flung from a high cliff, who cares? Besides, a nice little jig is playing while it happens.

With so much violence, and so many landscapes,and music so loud, the movie entirely fails tohang together. There are forced political moments,like an arbitrary lacrosse game among Mohawk andwhite children or the villainous Huron Magua (WesStudi, who does a pretty good job) taking time outto name the wrongs whites have done him. There areexplosions and waterfalls and panthers lurking inthe bushes. There is even a canoe chase. Howoverdone is it? The credits list ten tattooartists.

Overworking, underachieving, the creators of"The Last of the Mohicans" have crafted a big,loud, gaudy two hours of nothing. You come out ofthe theater $6.75 poorer. The sky seems low anddim, the people humble, the traffic quiet.Hollywood magic. I won't say that James FenimoreCooper would be offended by what's been done tohis novel; for all I know, he would have liked it.Cooper had lousy taste