Misfire!

Rating: 6/10 (18 August 2002)

What with all the war movies lately? A big drought of several year either side of Saving Private Ryan, then within the space of a year we have; Behind Enemy Lines, Black Hawk Down, Harts War, Pearl Harbor, Tigerland, We Were Soldiers and finally now Windtalkers - Director John Woo's latest.
Sadly, despite my high expectations, Windtalkers falls well down on the aforementioned list in terms of both quality and enjoyment.
Problems: Is anyone else sick of the "cop/soldier haunted by nightmares/guilt of not being able to save partner/girlfriend/comrade" cliche? And thats just the beggining. The enemy is facelss and only exists to fall out of bushes whenever Cage shoots, acting is uniformally bad (why not poach half the cast of Last of the Mohicans for the Navaho parts? Their acting was far superior), the typical racist cliches, pistols with the stopping-power of shotguns, with only ONE shot required to knock over and kill any number of adversaries and contains the worst developed love story this side of Pearl Harbor.
Windtalkers is not without merit, the butterfly interupted by a floating body still remains with me and the set-piece with Slater in the Japanese village is typical Woo.
Other than that, there are few redeeming features and I also agree with several other reviewers on the bizzare use of stock footage for the battleship scenes. Why a 100 million dollar film need to use stock footage is beyond me. Perhaps an attempt to give a feeling of authenticity?
A huge disappointment for Woo
7/10 (thank to my Woo bias, otherwise 5/10)