Windtalkers Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)June 10th, 2002
Planet Sick-Boy: http://www.sick-boy.com
"We Put the SIN in Cinema"
© Copyright 2002 Planet Sick-Boy. All Rights Reserved.
If you want to see a good war film directed by John Woo, hunt down his 1990 Hong Kong offering called Bullet in the Head. But if you've been hankering for a disappointing Woo-helmed battle flick, then Windtalkers will be right up your dimwitted alley. Its interesting story about Navajo involvement in World War II is based on a largely unknown but important part of American history. Despite that premise, however, there isn't much that separates Windtalkers from crap like Rambo.
Filmed back in the summer of 2000 and originally due in theatres on November 9 last year (the studio must have feared stiff competition from the likes of Heist and Life As a House, or just really wanted to take advantage of the lucrative Flag Day weekend of 2002), Windtalkers opens with several shots of the red rocks of Arizona's desert (a scary flashback to the beginning of Woo's last disappointment, M:I-2). Young Navajo Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach, Smoke Signals) bids farewell to his reservation and hops on a bus full of other Navajo on their way to become U.S. Marines. But not just any Marines, mind you - these particular privates will be code talkers, trained at Camp Pendleton to use their unusual and undecipherable dialect over battlefield radios to baffle the Japanese.
Meanwhile, grizzled Sgt. Joe Enders (Nicolas Cage, Captain Corelli's Mandolin) has just been sprung from a Pearl Harbor hospital facility after recovering from a combat injury that perforated his eardrum and damaged his psyche (a pretty nurse played by The Importance of Being Earnest's Frances O'Connor helps him cheat on a hearing test prior to his earlier-than-expected release). Deemed able to kill once again, Enders is given a bizarre and unwelcome assignment (in the vein of other shell-shocked screen soldiers like Captains Willard [Apocalypse Now] and Miller [Saving Private Ryan]) - partner with the still wet-behind-the-ears Yahzee and protect him and his invaluable knowledge of the Navajo language. The catch is that Enders would have to kill Yahzee rather than allow the Japanese to capture him and torture the code out of him.
When the men are sent to take the strategically important island of Saipan, Windtalkers falls into just about every clichéd trap that there is. Enders refuses to get friendly with Yahzee, partly because he's a dick but also because it will make Yahzee more difficult to take out if/when the time comes. The very pro-American Yahzee has trouble fitting in with the other soldiers and becomes so horrified at what he sees on the battlefield that he can't even muster the courage to discharge his weapon when his life is in danger (but before you know it, he's offing Japs left and right). The little Navajo culture he brings to the war is dismissed by both his fellow soldiers and the film's script (penned by Blown Away's John Rice and Joe Batteer). It's all paper-thin stuff about honor and mysticism, and it makes the film a lot less about code talkers than it is about the troubles Whitey had to go through in dealing with them.
The Navajo shortcomings and Enders' endless search for redemption (a lot of Marines died because of a bad choice he made in his first scene) makes the film a walking platitude, highlighted by scene after scene in which Cage's character kills dozens of Japs in an open battlefield without getting so much as a scratch. In the meantime, Yahzee (I think they wound up naming a dice game after this guy) just can't stop grinning. There are other soldiers (Peter Stormare, Noah Emmerich, Mark Ruffalo, Christian Slater), but most are given such brief backgrounds, they may as well have not even bothered introducing them at all. O'Connor's character, who disappears after the first ten minutes, is the most unnecessary, with her voiced-over letters written to Enders serving only to distract and cause fits of unintentional giggles. Why waste the time? We all know Enders is going to have to make The Big Decision at the end - it's sort of like an action remake of Sophie's Choice.
I am (or was) the biggest Woo fan out there and have watched his Holy Trinity of Hong Kong films (The Killer, Hard Boiled, A Better Tomorrow) so many times that I've worn out the tapes. His Face/Off is one of the best American action films ever made, but with Windtalkers and M:I-2 (not to mention his other post-Hong Kong films, Broken Arrow and Hard Target), I'm just about ready to write the guy off. There is so much to groan about in this film, I lost count - things like product placement (in a war movie!), as well as incredibly cheesy stock footage of battleships from what looks like the 1950s. There are also problems with continuity, like when Yahzee forgets to use the code when he radios in a request for a bombardment.
Woo can still craft some good, inventive action sequences (there's a beheading you'll be discussing on the way home), and he manages to find a way to incorporate the slo-mo bird flight here, too. The battlefield choreography is, at times, decent, but it's nothing like Woo's previous work, which sometimes resembled Crouching Tiger-like ballet. The biggest void is the lack of a big, stylish, one-on-one showdown, which is the director's trademark. There is a lot of close-range combat here, but it's extremely difficult to tell the Marines from the Japanese.
Actingwise, Windtalkers isn't much of a force. Cage underplays his role, mostly because he has zero range. Beech does about as well but seems miscast. A nerdier Yahzee may have worked better (or perhaps a Yahzee who was played by an actual Navajo). The sad thing is that viewers are likely to prefer this largely mindless take on the Pacific theatre over the much more cerebral The Thin Red Line.
2:11 - R for pervasive graphic war violence, and for language
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
