For a movie purportedly about the bond created in overcoming cultural and linguistic differences of language cultures, John Woo’s Windtalkers fails to translate any of its dialogue into anything unique, creative or entertaining.  Expectedly, the film is beautifully and brutally shot, with Woo’s trademark multi-angle camera movement (are you paying attention Michael Bay) combined with Saving Private Ryan style gruesomeness.  But the screenplay and story are littered with just about every war movie cliché known to anyone who has ever seen a war movie.  It tries to be so many things, but fails to amount to much of anything.  When it tries to be introspective about the horrors of war, it retreads the worst interpretations and translations of Platoon.  When it tries to be about the horrors of war and its effects on common people, it mocks Private Ryan.  And when it tries to be about loyalty, friendship and honor, it cowers in the shadows of We Were Soldiers.  By the time the credits mercifully role, we are left with a visually stunning mess.

Woo misses out on a great chance to tell one of the greatest, and basically unknown, aspects of American History.  The tale of the Navajo Indians who were used to communicate message during World War II’s Pacific campaign, deserved much better than what is given to us here.  The movie starts with Cage’s character being pinned down and ultimately losing his entire unit in a battle.  He then suffers an injury and is sent to a hospital where he meets a pretty young nurse (O’Connor) I tell you these things as forewarning, and to help me understand the purpose of them.  While there, he is assigned the special duty of protecting these Indian linguists, so that the “code” could not be broken. He is assigned to protect Ben, while his partner is assigned to protect Willie.  Of course they are going to clash, culturally and personally, then they are going to bond. Since it’s apparently a requirement for Cage to look sad, troubled and conflicted, too much of the focus of the movie becomes him and his characters development.  We are shown him being moody, shown him reliving his past, and shown him attempting to overcome the demons haunting him.  One of the major problems I had with this movie was a repeated focus on his loss of hearing (which he hides thanks to the nurse) and then his subsequent exposure to no less than 5 explosions within a very dangerous range, which obviously had little to no effect at all.  It may be petty of me to notice this, but when the story has wandered as far of as this one has, it is difficult not to.  The main part of this story should have been the code talkers, and how they affected the war effort.  The code was created based upon the Navajo language and was never decoded by the Japanese and resulted in great successes and ultimate victory.  In the film however it is relegated to another plot point that Cage’s character must deal with.  The best scenes in the movie occur when the Indians are talking amongst themselves in code, be it war related, or not.  Unfortunately though, these are very few and far between and the remainder is just a glorified distraction. The only thing that saves this film from total disaster is Woo's beautiful visuals and effects.  Although he borrows from Ryan for the action sequences, he still has a skill for giving the sequences a life of their own.  Were it not for these, Windtalkers truly would have fallen flatter than it already does.

Outside of Cage, the performances are nearly indistinguishable, and I say that not because they are all wearing uniforms working as a team, or because the Indians all look alike (which they don’t) but because they are all a conglomerate and collection of characters from much better war films.  Slater disappears yet again, showing (as he did in The Contender) that he is not at his best when the spotlight isn’t on him and his sneering sarcasm.  Beach, who was so good in Smoke Signals, does his best with the role, but looks uncomfortable at times for some of the words he has to utter. Emmerech gets dumbed down as the lummox of the group who will of course make insensitive comments, but come to a realization later.  But the biggest, and most representative waste is that of a nearly unrecognizable Mark Ruffalo (hiding behind a mustache, luckily).  Cast as the Italian/Greek of the group (for the requisite “What did/will we do back in the States sequence) Ruffalo never gets a chance to flex his considerable talents in this role.  Like the film, the potential is there, but gets buried in bad dialogue and finally drowned in cliché’s.  For shame Mr. Woo, the forgotten heroes, and this nation, deserved much better.

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