Windtalkers Review
by Harry Caul (harry_caulx AT yahoo DOT com)June 12th, 2002
WINDTALKERS (2002)
Reviewed by: Harry "The Spectator" Caul
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Starring: Nicolas Cage, Adam Beach, Christian Slater, Noah Emmerich, Emily Mortimer
Directed by: John Woo
Written by: Joe Batteer, John Rice Distributor: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release year: 2002
Rating: (5 out of 10)
John Woo’s Windtalkers is further proof that he has no clue how to communicate with an intelligent audience. His storytelling capabilities are astonishingly bad. Woo is a director of moments, some brilliantly original, but most are wickedly low on the perceptive scale. Woo doesn't know what works and what doesn’t when he's trying to tell a truly dramatic story. He is more comfortable with action and not with phonetic and emotional dialogue. He should stick to things where the action is all that counts. John Woo gives us attitudes on screen.
If you think about it, Nic Cage is the perfect Wooing-actor. A guy who knows how to project an attitude—just be careful when you ask him to act as, to quote Forrest Gump, “You never know what you’re going to get.” Thankfully Cage turns in one of his more memoriable performances. And if there is a saving grace for this film it is Cage’s performance.
Nicholas Cage plays Sergeant Enders who is assigned to protect and if nescessary eliminate one Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach). Enders is a part of a special group who will watch over their Navaho Code Talkers so that they may help win the war in the Pacific against the Japanese.
During World War II the United States won important battles against the Japanese due to the heroic acts of Navaho Indians, and the sacred language they spoke. A vernacular language that was not a written dialect, hence its importance as a wartime code. An obscure language that had no traceable path seemed like the perfect solution to the Japanese code breaking abilities.
If you’re looking for a movie that allows you to get know more than that about the Navajo and the important role they played, go grab a book.
The concept is good, and the possibility of a strong narrative is there. But with such inept screenwriting and directing the story is crushed by the weight of its ineptness.
Cliché after cliché made the story hard to stomach. The whole time I’m watching this mess of a movie I couldn’t help but feel for those who were hoping for something more from Hollywood. No matter how obtuse that may sound. Carnage is everywhere in the film, which is the norm for Woo, who is always over the top in his directing.
The clichés presented are saved only by some decent acting. Christian Slater was actually tolerable and Adam Beach as Ben Yahzee was effective.
The central dramatic issue of the movie revolves around whether or not Enders could kill his code talker if the situation presented itself. Unfortunately, how this is handled makes a real mess of the movie. It was a fairly bold move on the part of the screenwriters, but ultimately it didn’t work.
The movie is constantly derailed by a series of flashbacks that Enders suffers and we must endure. The timing and the maintaining of the narrative thrust of the story is constantly mucked up by Woo.
The movie should have made the code talkers its center, instead we get Enders. But after all, when you make the focus about an Anglo-American pitiless soldier, you can get someone like Nic Cage to star in it.
History by Hollywood has always been a sad event, and unfortunately Windtalkers does nothing but add to that shameful legacy. The movie opens June 14th, 2002.
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