Windtalkers Review

by Mark R. Leeper (markrleeper AT yahoo DOT com)
July 3rd, 2002

WINDTALKERS
    (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

    CAPSULE: John Woo's WINDTALKERS is inspired by the true story of Navaho code talkers in World War II. It is an attempt to make a standard "minority in the military" war film with Woo's brand of violence. The real code talkers deserved a better tribute. This disappointing film is a perfect example of a good history story avoided. Rating: 5 (0 to 10), high 0 (-4 to +4)

Adam Beach plays Ben Yahzee, a Navaho Marine who was trained to be a code talker. Nicholas Cage plays John Enders a Marine with a badly and painfully injured ear and survivors' guilt. Enders is assigned to guard Yahzee's code. His highest priority is to keep the code out of Japanese hands even if it means killing Yahzee. His fear of the possibility of having to kill Yahzee he hides with a blanket of affected distaste for Yahzee. Together they go through the battle of Saipan and each discovers the other's mettle.

OK. First things first.

1) The Navaho code talkers are heroes. In addition they really were cheated of much of the honor they deserved. I am not arguing that.

2) I would like for them and for all Navaho to like this picture.
3) I would like there to be a good film about the Navaho code talkers contribution to the Pacific war.

4) This is not that film.

There is a very standard "minority in the military" plot. The members of the minority join the unit. They are mistrusted a little by all, but especially by one particular bigot. In the heat of battle they go beyond the call of duty to protect even the bigot. In the end they have won the respect of their doubters and have proven themselves. In the 1950s it was a very moving plot. More recently we have seen it in THE TUSKEEGEE AIRMEN and MEN OF HONOR. When WINDTALKERS claims to be based on a true story they mean that there were really Navaho code talkers. And they really made an important contribution. The filmmakers have told the standard plot with code talkers as the minority. WINDTALKERS is an attempt to use John Woo's stylized violence in a standard "object lesson" war film plot. The code talkers were the chosen by the filmmaker as the fungible minority.

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN opened the way to show battle more realistically in film including that it be more violent. It seems to make sense to have John Woo direct since his films are known for their melodramatic plots and their staccato violence episodes. The problem is that his films are the wrong sort of violence for a realistic war film. For example it is dramatic to have an explosion with an actor spring-boarding in the foreground to look like he was caught in the explosion. A soldier may have even seen it happening once in his career. In this film it is used many times to dress up explosions. Merely making a battle scene more violent does not make it more realistic.

The story is based on historical fact. During World War II the most useful encryption technique for tactical use in the field was Navaho Code Talk. It was a double code, one level of which used the Navaho language, one of the most difficult languages in the world to learn. There were in the world only about 24 non-Navahos who knew the language and none of them were fighting for the Japanese. Navahos developed the code and could be taught it quickly. For anyone else it was useless gibberish. The Japanese could (and did) capture Navahos, but if they didn't know the other half of the code, even under torture they could not decode it. Messages in the code could be sent over open radio channels without the possibility of eavesdropping or forging. The story of Navaho code talking is fascinating, but unfortunately it still remains to be told in a film.

There are some notable inaccuracies in the film. The pairing of a Navaho with a particular Marine partner, central to the plot of WINDTALKERS, is a fiction according to the actual Navaho veterans. Certainly there was nobody who acted as a bodyguard. While "windtalkers" may sound better than "code talkers" there was a lot more wind talkers than code talkers. "Wind talk" is a literal translation of the Navaho word for radio. If the word "wind talkers" was used it would merely be any radio operator.

John Woo superficially glosses over what should have been the most interesting parts of his story to get to cliched drama and stylized violence. He was the wrong director to tell the story of these heroes. I give his film a 5 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +0 on the -4 to +4 scale. (Much of the historical information in this review is based on the History Channel program "History vs. Hollywood: Windtalkers".)

    Mark R. Leeper
    [email protected] Copyright 2002 Mark R. Leeper

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