Starring: Nicholas Cage, Adam Beach, Christian Slater, Roger Willie
Windtalkers is so bad that it makes Missing in Action 2 look like Saving Private Ryan. One would think that after the past few years, where we've been blessed with films like Ryan, The Thin Red Line, and Blackhawk Down (not to mention the magnificent HBO miniseries Band of Brothers), the reinvention of the war film would have been a done deal. The cinematic depiction of battle has evolved from an excuse for adrenaline-fueled juvenile entertainment into a much richer, infinitely more terrifying (and arguably more realistic) experience. Anything that deviates from this "new normal," like films such as the surprisingly bland and bloodless Pearl Harbor, feels dishonest in comparison.
Certainly, these latest films are not the first to portray war as hell; to cite a few examples, Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket covered that ground adroitly in the 1980s. However, those films occupy a specific genre -- the Vietnam movie -- which serves the very specific purpose of conveying the hopelessness of that particular war. The new movies reinforced an aspect of war often neglected in the movies -- they conveyed the hopelessness of battle, regardless of which war is being shown.
No movie better showcases the sheer terror of being shot at than the opening sequence in Saving Private Ryan. Sure, the Germans aren't going to kill Tom Hanks in the first twenty minutes (some Hollywood conventions have to survive), but everyone else on the screen is fair game. Unlike the "action" films in the 1980s, battle was finally portrayed in a way that more closely meshes with the stories told by veterans who were there. It didn't matter if you were strong, it didn't matter if you tried to dodge the bullets; in the end, luck mattered most if you were to escape a senseless, random death. Filmed with more intensity than ever before, battle was no longer exciting, at least not in the traditional sense, where excitement resulted in enthusiastic glee for the moviegoer. War became hard to watch. It still got your blood pumping, but it also got you thinking.
| BANG! BOOM! KAPOW! ZAP! |
 |
Windtalkers, however, is a traditional film in a genre where traditional is not a compliment. Directed by noted action maestro John Woo, the movie made me laugh within the first five minutes, which is never a good sign in an ostensibly serious war film. Every gunshot is a cannon blast, every grenade explodes like a drum of gasoline, every artillery burst is a miniature Hiroshima. No one in this film dies badly; they all die well, flopping theatrically onto the ground in painfully-slow motion, screaming for their loved ones on the director's cue. The enemy is a faceless horde. That's likely the way the Marines fighting on Saipan saw the Japanese, but they're made so nondescript that for the moviegoer the Marines might as well have been fighting the Germans, or the Russians. One can't help but wonder whether MGM mandated that the enemy be made as generic as possible, in discreet hope that post-production CGI could morph them into some other enemy in order to break this film into the lucrative Japanese market.
I guess there was a plot in the film. It's inspired by a genuinely interesting story about how the United States employed members of the Navajo tribe to transmit important messages during the campaign against the Japanese in the Pacific. The two Navajo featured most prominently in the film, Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach) and Charles Whitehorse (Roger Willie), aid the Marines invading Saipan in June of 1944. They call in artillery and air strikes to dig out the entrenched Japanese. Instead of focusing on their heroism, however, the movie spends a lot of time with Nicholas Cage, who plays Yahzee's escort Sgt. Enders. Enders is a broken down mess, whose allegiance to orders got his platoon killed in the Solomons. Shell-shocked and barely able to hear out of an injured ear, Enders gets assigned to protect Yahzee; or, more accurately, to protect the code "at all costs." This is obviously interpreted as meaning that Enders has to kill Yahzee if they face capture. What could have been an interesting historical study -- a Native American version of Glory -- is instead bogged down by a rather pedestrian moral dilemma (see the "Things to Watch Out For" section at the end of this review for more details on this).
 |
"HQ, HQ, help me, I'm trapped in a stereotype!" |
Even if Windtalkers had the most riveting of plots it would still fail as entertainment. Again, the battle sequences are shot like some cheap Rambo imitation, with plenty of ahistorical tactics -- it's a wonder our men ever won World War II fighting like Chuck Norris. There's one scene in particular that was so patently ridiculous that it led me to question the sanity of the screenwriter. Enders and Yahzee, their company caught between friendly artillery exploding in the rear and the Japanese trenches to their front, come up with a plan to stop the not-so-friendly fire. You see, earlier in the film, Yahzee is told he looks Japanese by your stereotypical bigoted soldier. Taking his "resemblance" to heart, Yahzee decides to change into a Japanese uniform in order to sneak into enemy lines in the heat of battle, and use the Japanese radio to redirect the fire. Enders comes along to pretend to be his prisoner, and of course the attempt succeeds. Just like it did in the old G.I. Joe cartoon, where I swear I saw it tried before.
Ridiculous, just plain ridiculous. Windtalkers gets 1 popcorn.
Things to watch out for: John Woo shows a little bit of restraint in this movie: there are no doves. Yet, we do see a butterfly and some seagulls flying, so I guess he couldn't hold himself back too much.
Oh, while the Marines invade Hawaii in the beginning of the movie (Saipan's a lot flatter, but oh well, Hawaii is tropical), by the end of the film they're clearly in Southern California. With all those Japanese soldiers in California, I'm surprised we didn't lose the war.
I recommend you read the Washington Post article entitled "To the Shores of Hollywood." It discusses how the producers of Windtalkers cooperated with the Department of Defense in making the movie. It's interesting to see how the article attempts to portray the Pentagon as interfering with the filmmaking process. Particularly noteworthy is the controversy surrounding whether the codetalkers' escorts were ordered to kill them to prevent their capture. Having extensively researched military cooperation with Hollywood back in my grad school days (I spoke several times with Phil Strub, the head Pentagon liaison quoted in the article), I can vouch for the integrity of the process the Pentagon uses to decide what changes should be made in order for producers to obtain military cooperation. Unfortunately, I can only assume that the producers of Windtalkers ignored most of the Pentagon's recommendations, given how laughably unrealistic the film is.
Dave Kozik is a guest critic, filling in while Filmboy is on sabbatical.
