Windbreakers

Rating: Null/10 (23 June 2002)

First, the lead actors all did a decent job. However, the director, screenwriter, technical people of all walks just did the lamest job they could get away with. And it shows.
I also need to note that the Code Talkers had only three opportunities to do their bit, and it is only for things like sending coordinates to ships so they can shell the Jap fortifications. Nothing too interesting. Actually, the best place they had to shine might have been when using an enemy radio to call off friendly fire; no code talk was used it this case as far as I could tell.
The movie had lots of excitement, but the technical level is similar to the big ensemble scenes at the end of Bond films.
Woo does not seem to know how to frame a scene. One example: he has a fighter/bomber swoop low over the enemy and drop a large bomb on them, then fly away. The obviously computer-animated plane comes in too slowly (slower than it could have stayed in the air), then suddenly slows way down and drops the bomb while maybe 30 feet or less above the ground, then suddenly speeds up again. The bomb falls only about its own length before hitting the ground, but in this time they had it jog sideways a bit, the better to line up with the previously filmed pyrotechnic 'explosion' I suppose. The blast is smaller than the bomb, and looks like someone set of a small packet of 4th of July sparklers. I imagine that the plane is so low because when Woo framed the landscape shot, he forget to leave enough room at the top of the picture for the area the plane would later occupy. There is scene after incompetent scene like this. ALL explosions look like standard movie pyrotechnics. Didn't they learn anything from Saving Pvt. Ryan? Aren't clods of dirt (at LEAST) supposed to fly out of explosions on the ground?

The movie itself is just poorly thought out, uninvolving cliche's. There are much better films out there this summer.