John Woo does it again with greatness! Cage's act is his best in years!

Rating: 6/10 (2 August 2002)

WINDTALKERS is a World War II movie that takes a close look on why the US forces won the Pacific...the Navajos and their code. Along with them came John Woo's style of story telling, namely human relationships between characters ala 1989's THE KILLER.
Nicolas Cage plays Joe Enders who is assigned to protect the force's Navajo codetalkers but most of all, protect the code at ALL COSTS. Adam Beach plays Yahzee whom Enders is assigned to, and with his part you can see the Navajo culture. Christian Slater, who expectedly did not have that much screen time as one might think, plays the friendly soldier Ox who is assigned to another Navajo named Whitehorse.
Cage's performance in this movie is nothing less than excellent, in fact I believe it's his best performance since his award-winning role in 1995's LEAVING LAS VEGAS. Enders is traumatized in the beginning, has personal clashes, suffers from his left ear, and tried so hard to relate with others before finally realizing his mission and its value. Cage also showed A LOT of emotion throughout the movie.
The Navajos were well portrayed. Not only did they have to leave their homeland and families to train and fight, they also had to deal with the realities of war, war horror and even discrimination in their own army. The movie showed that Navajos truly deserved honor right in the beginning, and they had to wait over 55 years for it. Another thing here...you can really feel the pain Navajos get when they're discriminated or snubbed or used.
John Woo's directing in this movie is rather different from his other movies. Don't expect any 2-fisted gunplay here, don't expect any of his action gimmicks but the one thing you should expect is the way he directs his characters...through human relations. Just like the classic THE KILLER, Windtalkers showed deep character development between Enders and Yahzee. While The Killer showed the boundary between an assassin and a cop gets erased, the boundary between the white man and the Navajo also gets cleared off leading to one major cause to fight and stand for in the war.
There are several slow motion scenes here as well, although I do find them shorter played and seemed to run kinda faster than those in old movies. As for the violence, expect A LOT of bombing, firing, killing and other elements of destruction to fill the screen. It is John Woo's most violent film since his Hong Kong movies, but they are not as graphic as that of Spielberg's SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. It's not a bad thing though because the violence on-screen is very well worth watching. Woo surprised me with the fact that he is truly CAPABLE of directing a war movie. He can really direct thousands of extras to run forward with all those explosions and still make it look realistic and convincing. Woo is indeed not limited to the "lone action hero" style of screenplays with this movie, and aside from violence he can really bring out the act and emotions from his characters.
In concluding this, I give TWO-THUMBS UP for Woo's direction, the expressive cast and the story. WINDTALKERS is one of the best movies I've seen this year and it easily kills the earlier war movies like HART'S WAR, BEHIND ENEMY LINES and WE ARE SOLDIERS.
WINDTALKERS is not SAVING PRIVATE RYAN but it sure sits up there beside it. Easily one of the best war movies ever made.
Salute to Woo, the stars and the Navajos!