On December 8, 1941, the United States declared war on Japan. For the next several years, U.S. forces were fully engaged in battle throughout the Pacific, taking over islands one by one in a slow progression towards mainland Japan.
During this brutal campaign, the Japanese were continually able to break coded military transmissions, dramatically slowing U.S. progress. In 1942, several hundred Navajo Americans were recruited as Marines and trained to use their language as code. Marine Joe Enders is assigned to protect Ben Yahzee – a Navajo code talker, the Marines’ new secret weapon. Enders’ orders are to protect his code talker, but if Yahzee should fall into enemy hands, he’s to “”protect the code at all costs.”” Against the backdrop of the horrific Battle of Saipan, when capture is imminent, Enders is forced to make a decision: if he can’t protect his fellow Marine, can he bring himself to kill him to protect the code? (TPS from Yahoo Movies)Windtalkers is not the typical John Woo film, you will not see any white doves flying, slow-mo bullets shooting by you. Which, I found a refreshing change, because to be frank John Woo has been “”boring”” me lately, he hasn’t done anything “”different”” in years. This film is a by the numbers War Flick. What surprised me when I saw this film was how violent and bloody it was. When watching the trailers, you are lead to believe that this is a “”different”” type of war film, a movie that is intellectual and about characters and relationships, along the lines of the excellent “”Hearts War””. Instead we get the bloody, brutal, “”realities”” of war, movie, movie. With the characters playing second bannana to the battle scenes. Nick Cage and the rest of the cast were all uniformly excellent.The film does an adequate job of showing the horrors of war, and you come to actually care about the characters, inspite of some of the shallowness of them. The casting on “”Windtalkers”” was excellent for the first time in long time, we actually have a war film where people actually look different and scruffy. Where they aren’t these “”generic”” hollywood pretty boys with their crew cops playing “”soldiers””. These guys felt and looked real – yeah, I realize its a contradition to say on the one hand they looked and felt real, while saying they were lightweight.My only real quibbles with the film is the unrealistic and pointless “”relationship”” between Enders and the nurse, and the lack of any “”direction”” or “”motivation”” behind the battles. After awhile the battle scenes all started to look the same, and generic, none of them seemed to have an “”objective”” or “”definitive”” goal beyond “”let’s take that hill””. Well after they took 5 or 6 “”hills”” you start throwing up your hands and saying, “”You just took that damn hill. Let’s move on already!””””Windtalkers”” is an “”engaging”” 2 1/2 hour film that is more noise than substance, but somehow it worked for me. Maybe it’s because I saw too many bad and boring movies lately, that I just want to like something, so despite it’s flaws, I enjoyed myself. Final Grade A-