Poor 1940's fare.

Rating: Null/10 (4 February 2004)

If I say there are SPOILERS WITHIN does it really matter?
You think of John Woo and you think of films like "Hard Boiled" and "Broken Arrow" You think of Nicolas Cage and you remember the tremendous early films and later ones like "Raising Arizona" and "The Rock". You think of the great war movies. How could you miss? I don't really know but this one does....by a long way! I suppose coming on the back of two truely great movies like "Saving Private Ryan" and "the Thin Red line", any movie would be dull in comparison but when you think that the excellent "Blackhawk Down" and "We were Soldiers Once" were also coming on the back of "Ryan", this offering is nothing less then poor 1940's fare. The story is stupid, the acting passable and the action sequences dull. The whole movie looked like it was shot on the backlot used by the TV series "M*A*S*H" and some of the sequences to show the windtalkers at work were petty. For instance when they have to call in a barrage from the navy they use the windtalkers so the Japanese won't understand whats going on?????!!!!! WHY? All they had to do was get any old grunt to call in the fire mission and that was that. Another point is that the Japanses were dug in into the side of a mountain in great defendable positions but decided to launch a "banzi" attack!!!!!!!!?????? WHY? I suppose that is what the Japanese do! Anyway, a piece of fourties fare given a makeover. My rating is 1 out of 10.