Review of Windtalkers (2002) by Josh G — 29 Oct 2008

If Windtalkers works at all, it is to the credit of the actors -- all do as good a job as they can with what little they have to work with. But since this movie is directed by the same guy who did Mission Impossible 2 (the DVD case is not shy about providing that information), the movie focuses more on the explosions and gunfire than on the story.

Windtalkers is supposed to be a story about Navajo Indians who were used during WWII by the American forces. See, the U.S. had hidden a code in their language that the Japanese were unable to crack. So Sgts. Enders (Cage) and Anderson (Slater) are assigned to protect two of the so-called 'windtalkers' within their squadron. If it's not obvious enough by Cage's prominent placement in the movie poster, Windtalkers is much less about the windtalkers themselves and much more about Cage's character.

Which would have been fine, really, with a different title. If the movie didn't try to set itself up as some sort of historical drama, instead just allowing it to be a story about a group of people in wartime... it might have worked a little better. Cage manages to straddle the line between powerful drama and over-the-top zaniness, and it works.

But alas, our director John Woo doesn't know how to do anything other than fast-paced action sequences. Ergo, the historical story is giving extremely short shrift, and the moderately large cast of characters (there are about seven major characters, and about two dozen faceless soldiers that exist for the purpose of being killed off) are given one storyline each. One guy is a racist -- he hates him some Injuns -- while another guy misses his wife. Yes, those are about the entirety of their storylines. So like I said, it's up to the actors to have the chops to give these very flat characters some personality, which they mostly manage to pull off. Noah Emmerich, luckily enough, is not asked to do much except play his stock guy-who-is-ignorantly-malicious.

The strongest thread in this fraying quilt of a plot comes from Sgt. Enders, who exhibits mixed feelings about his mission due to the fact that he accidentally got a previous squadron killed in a hazy, overly-dramatic opening sequence. Okay, so a story that you can summarize in two words ("He's conflicted") isn't much of a story, but, again, Cage does what he can with it.

And I guess that's it. Which isn't to say that Windtalkers isn't an enjoyable film: it certainly is. The battle scenes are expertly choreographed and the pyrotechnics are astounding. There are times when the brutality comes suddenly; it can be quite startling.

But the movie is filled to the brim with war-movie cliches and one-dimensional characters, so much so that it is ultimately impossible to discern this movie apart from many other war movies.

"Windtalkers?" you will say. "Oh yeah, I think I saw that once, the one with the Navajo Indians, right? I don't really remember what happened, though.".

Trust me. That is exactly what you will say.