Windtalkers (2002)

Directed by John Woo. Starring Nicolas Cage, Adam Beach, Christian Slater, Noah Emmerich, Mark Ruffalo, Roger Willie, Frances O’Connor, Peter Stormare, Roger Van Holt, Martin Henderson, Jason Isaacs. [R]

Well-meaning but superficial war picture dramatizes the true story of Navajo code talkers, American Indians serving their country during World War II by using their language as a secret means of communication that couldn’t be easily intercepted and interpreted by the enemy. One such code talker is Private Yahzee (Beach), but the script decides to focus on his assigned protector instead, a seasoned white soldier recovering from psychological battle trauma played by Cage (he even gets a flimsy romance sub-plot with nurse O’Connor). Joe Batteer and John Rice’s derivative and cliché-riddled script wouldn’t have passed muster even before the formula was concocted, with mostly one-note characters filling the platoon ranks—the only thing more obvious than featuring a soldier who’s an outspoken racist (Emmerich) is featuring the inevitable scene where one of the Navajo soldiers saves his life and makes him stare off for a moment, stunned and ashamed. Large-scale, sweeping shots of major combat maneuvers often provide glorious and gut-wrenching visuals, but director Woo falters with the visceral, up-close fighting, where his melodramatic and hyperkinetic action filmmaking tendencies turn things so over-the-top that they make fellow war pictures like Pearl Harbor and Hacksaw Ridge almost look like models of restraint (almost). A fascinating and little-known piece of history deserving of a richer, more personal film treatment.

40/100