Review of Windtalkers (2002) by Ketil T — 04 Oct 2009

June 1944: American forces land on Saipan in the Marianas Islands. Here the Japanese, though caught off guard fight fiercly and to the death. Deployed with the US Marines are their secret weapon, Navejo Codetalkers, who have devloped a code derived from the Navejo language that the Japanese are unable to decipher. Ben Yahzee is a Codetalker on Saipan, he is guarded by Sgt. Joe Enders but what Yahzee doesn't know is that Enders mission is to protect the code...at all costs.

Director John Woo has taken every cliche of the Saving Private Ryan era war movie and thrown it into Windtalkers well adding a dash of his Hong Kong gunplay into the mix (something that just feels out of place). Adam Beach does a deceint job as the one note Yahzee (he's a nice guy, shit stupid, but nice) though it does stretch credability that he's carrying around a war winning secret in his head and acts SHOCKED when he learns Enders is suppossed to kill him reather then let the Japanese learn to break the code. Also have him pretty close to the fighting for such a valuable guy. Nicolas Cage is Nicolase Cage take him or leave him. Peter Stormare, Mark Ruffalo and Christian Slater are all one note, as is Brian Van Holt as the racist squad memeber that come to respect the Navejo (what did I say about cliches). Actually the whole thing reeks of this PC drivel, it would be nice if Yahzee had been given some flaws beyond hopeless naivety. Oddly for a movie where the battles are ultra-violent all that violence comes off as sanitized thanks to Woo's stylization. Eventually it kicks in, this is an action movie disquised as a war movie (actually Woo's direction would be better served in a "Where Eagles Dare", "Guns of Navarone" type man-on-a-mission war flick), despite the battle scenes (nicely choregraphed but characters are all so interchangable its hard to tell whose getting shot) its only a mediocre action movie with nothing to recommend going out and rent it. Wait for it to come on TV.

Historical Note: The Battle of Saipan took place from June 15-July 9 1944 (though the last group of Japanese soldiers held out and wouldn't surrender until December 1945, 5 months after the war ended) on Saipan in the Marianas Islands and featured the largest Banzai charge of the war as well as the mass suicide of Japanese civilians who hurled themselves off cliffs rather then fall into American hands. Saipan was used a staging area for further operations in the Marianas Islands as well as the Liberation of the Philippines. Saipan also brought American bombers within striking distance of Japan itself.

The use of Codetalkers (nicknamed Windtalkers by themselves) was seen mainly in the Pacific theatre. The US Army had used ad hoc groups of Cherokee and Choctaw on the Western Front of World War I to great effect, thus the Germans prior to the Second World War made a largely unsuccesful effort to learn various First Nations languages, though this effort to cause the Americans to use Codetalkers to a much lesser extent in Europe and North Africa. Well Navejo was the primary language the Codetalkers code where based on, Comanche (Europe), Meskwaki/Fox (North Africa), and Basque (an ethnic group originally from Northern Spain/Southern France). The Japanese where never able to break the code. Codetalkers also served during the Korean War and the early days of the Vietnam War.