John Woo in "Hollywood's Cage"

Rating: Null/10 (27 September 2002)

It's not so John Woo. It's more like a John Holly Woo. In "Windtalkers", the director's 32nd features, John Woo turns to be a Hollywood veteran. Without a white dove flapping overhead that embodies what John has been insisting, it seems that he's been totally hollywood-ised and really enjoys his life in "Hollywood's Cage".
"Windtalkers" complies with all the Hollywood Rules: - Survive to be a protagonist, at least until the movie approaches its end; - Politically correct (In front of the Japanese mother and her daughter, Nicholas Cage didn't shoot them, showing great humanitarianism.) - Multi-orgasm, and if you don't feel it, just fake it..... but with reasonable intervals. - The "no-surprise" surprise. The "surprise" always comes when surprise is expected to come. - The exaggerated sound effect and the professional but pretending acting.
Watching "Windtalkers" is a process of decoding these Hollywood languages, which is what most audience are good at. Therefore, it is more than ironic that while the movie tells us it's essential to keep an unique language/coding system, it is just using the everybody-knows Hollywood coding system. It's a paradox. But to whoever only wants pleasure after a hard Friday's work, who cares?