Too low profile on native Americans, too high a body count

Rating: 5/10 (19 July 2002)

This is a very uneven movie, because it seems John Woo can't make up his mind about telling a truly compelling tale about the critical role that some native American soldiers played in WWII, or bombarding the hell out of the audience with repetitious and, ultimately tedious action, or telling us a tale about a dysfunctional human being (Cage) who becomes a highly functional Marine who becomes conflicted. Woo also borrows too many old WWII movie cliches, shows us the same type of explosion scenes over and over and over and over, and even makes a critical casting mistake with Peter Stormare as a Marine Corps gunnery sergeant (Peter can't overcome his thick Swedish accent). Thank goodness for the gentle, understated acting abilities of the real native American actors cast in this movie, and a little welcome gung-ho swagger from Christian Slater, which are the only things that got me through this one.