I get easily confused, you see. There's a commercial for the Marines that runs before every movie I see at a certain theatre and it features this scrawny guy climbing a rock formation in a Southwestern location that looks very much like Monument Valley. Joining the Marines is hard work, the ad suggests, but if you make it through the training, you'll be a hella tough man. So then the commercial ends and John Woo's latest film Windtalkers begins. And wouldn't you know it, we begin in Monument Valley and there's a guy joining the Marines and the ultimate message of the film seems to be that being a Marine is tough, but oh the heroic stories you'll be able to tell when you're through. Finally, the blurring was really too much for me. Wintalkers is an occasionally explosive, frequently sadly dull war movie that represents Woo's least interesting film since Van Damme took Hard Target out of his hand in post production. If Woo fans want to see the maestro try his hand at War, they should check out his flawed, but ambitious Vietnam epic Bullet In The Head.

We begin in island combat following dedicated Marine Joe Enders (Nicolas Cage) as he leads his troops to attempt to hold a swampy position. All around him, his men are dying, but Enders refuses to disobey orders. More and more men die until finally the bad guys (this film's morality is pretty black and white) throw a grenade in his general direction and for the first of at least a dozen times in this film, Nicolas Cage's stunt man is sent flying into the air in slow motion. When he comes to, he's in a hospital, he's been given the Silver Star, he's got three scars around his left eye, and his ear is shot to hell. He has hearing problems (which are irrelevant to the story, despite the symbolic prominence of his scarred ear) and he has balance problems (which also prove to be totally irrelevant to the story) because of his inner-ear damage. Thanks to the assistance of a kindly nurse (Frances O'Connor in what is absolutely the most thankless romantic supporting role I have *ever* seen in a movie), Enders is soon able to get back on active duty. He's assigned by a superior officer (Jason Isaacs, who must have been on set for twenty minutes) to watch on the the new Navajo radiomen the Marines were bringing in to use a new unbreakable code based on the Navajo language. But, it's explained, the code won't be any good anymore if the Japanese get their hands on any of the Navajo radiomen, so Enders's job is to protect the code at all costs. The music here assures us that this is not an idle threat, that Enders must be prepared to kill his codetalker rather than let him fall into enemy hands. The story then takes us off to to meet Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach who, after Smoke Signals appears to be Hollywood's go-to Native American) and Ox (Christian Slater), the Marine assigned to protect Whitehorse (Roger Willie) another codetalker. [You see, it's supposed to be cute that the American marine's nickname is "Ox" (because he's from Oxnard, California) and the Navajo is named Whitehorse. Somehow, this joke was funny when the Italian mobsters made fun of the names of rappers in Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog but here it's just a toss-off] And next thing you know, all of our Marines and all of our protectors are off to Saipan, where, over the next two hours, it seems that they're able to capture the island single-handedly. The only plot from the moment we get to Saipan on is whether at some point Enders is going to have to decide whether or not to terminate his codetalker. And if you think that decision won't come up... then I'm sorry I spoiled the surprise for me.

The script, by John Rice and Joe Batteer begins with an interesting premise — most Americans know nothing about the Navajo codetalkers, so exposing this part of American Military history is an admirable goal. And while the Army and Marines deny that the protectors had orders to kill their codetalkers if they fell into enemy hands, I find the scenario in this movie to be far more trustworthy than your typical US military spokesman. What I do wish is that the film hadn't degenerated into war clichés so very quickly. The only real twist involves the racism that the Navajos experienced even within their own army. Of course, the only guy who really mocks Yahzee and Whitehorse is the multi-generation Marine redneck (Noah Emmerich) and wouldn't you know that at some point, he'd learn the error of his ways. The notion that the only people who would have mocked a minority in an integrated WW2 Marine squad would be the most ignorant, lumbering idiots is just insulting sugar coating. I suspect that the real codetalkers experienced extensive and threatening racism from the educated and uneducated alike. I also can't speak for anything involving the film's authenticity, but I know that it didn't *feel* authentic. It felt like an Epcott Center-style recreation of Native American culture and traditions.

Additionally, I wish the film had actually built to some kind of interesting climax. Basically, they land on Saipan and their commander (Peter Stormare doing his typical confusing and garbled accent that seems totally out of place here, unless the true heroes of our invasion of Saipan were the Swedes, rather than the Navajo) tells them they're going to take the island. And the move along from skirmish to skirmish, losing friends, but gaining no particular momentum. Sometimes the codetalkers are helpful in their triumph, other times, the film doesn't make it clear why what they were doing was so necessary. You have to take it on faith. Now, I can personally take it on faith that the Navajo were integral to the Allied triumph on the Eastern Front, but this film mostly just pays lip-service.

When Woo made his Vietnam film, Bullet In The Head it wasn't really so much a film about the real experiences of Vietnam as a film about Woo's interpretations of American cinematic representations of Vietnam. His film is an hommage to Dear Hunter and Platoon and Apocalypse Now. It's pretty much all pastiche, but in an interesting way. Similarly, Windtalkers is less a film about the real experiences of World War 2 and more a reference to the classic WW2 films of Woo's idols, like John Ford. And there's more than a little of They Were Expendable here, but then there's also a healthy dose of Deer Hunter so who knows. The only thing that's clear is that this film doesn't really find Woo on stylistically solid footing. Thematically, you can see why this project would have appealed to him. Emotional homosocial bonding is a Woo favorite. And where do you get more emotional homosocial bonding than at war? As a big Ford fan, Woo also might have been amused by the "cowboys and Indians" subtext to the story, that beyond the occasional mention is pretty much dormant here.

Certainly some of Woo's visual tropes pop up here. There's a Mexican standoff with rifles, there are all the slo-mo shots of people flying away from explosions unharmed, and instead of his traditional doves, we get seagulls. The choreography in some of the battle scenes is also spectacular, with Woo using hundreds of extras and frequently keeping the action moving on multiple planes at once. But like the script, the action becomes repetitious after a while. After the first battle scene, Woo doesn't really have any more tricks up his sleave, it's all just more of the same. Also, the slow and emotional "private" moments between battles, a War movie standby, are really boring, rather than touching. Woo is usually an expert and mixing the sentimental and the explosive, but here he gets bogged down every time the fighting stops.

Because of the weaknesses of the script, the supporting roles are barely developed and the performances suffer. This is especially bad when you're dealing with talented actors. Mark Ruffalo, for example, is just about as good a young actor as we have, but if you watched his performance here as a hyperventilating Greek soldier, you would have no idea. Christian Slater is OK, but his character is supposed to be a relative innocent and since it's Christian Slater, it's tough to buy. Also, he is stuck with the single worst moment of dialogue in the summer so far — the soldiers are talking about what they're going to do when they get home and Slater actually has to explain that he's going to take his mother's fruit and mix it with a Swiss thing called yogurt and that's how he's going to make his money. The dude has to discuss how he's going to invent fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt! That's just weak.

Considering what he's given, Beach is fine as the Navajo, Yahzee. Actually, I would even say that he's pretty good. But my problems with his performance go back to script things over which he certainly had no control.

And then there's Nic Cage. I guess my only question is if this movie fails at the box office (as it inevitably will) will Cage take this as a sign that people want him to go back to making quirky and interesting movies in which he was actually required to do more than just act morose? That's all he does here. It should be noted, however, that Cage's Enders is perhaps the most lethal killing machine since John Rambo. Give this guy a gun and he *never* misses. I suspect that over the course of Windtalkers, Cage is responsible for the deaths of over one hundred Japanese soldiers. And that's one hundred casualties that we *see*. Who knows what killing he's done in his spare time? I mean, sure, Rambo wiped out the entire Soviet army in Rambo three, but I really think Cage could give him a run for his money.

I'm going to take a break from facile war movies for a while, if you don't mind. I understand that in this day and age, that may make me seem unpatriotic, but it shouldn't. I believe that my feelings of patriotism are directly linked to the quality of the film I'm watching. Saving Private Ryan still fills me with pride. Windtalkers (which put at least one of the friends I saw it with to sleep) just fills me with apathy. It has all the resonance of the Marines commercials it resembles.

Recommended:
No

Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age