A masterpiece of criminally bad film-making

Rating: 3/10 (2 March 2009)

Not being a fan of Nicolas Cage or John Woo I went in with low expectations of this movie. What I got was something completely awful in terms of historical accuracy, entertainment value and artistic merit.
Nicolas cage must have taken out hundreds of Japanese soldiers throughout the movie and the movie goes to great length to show his passion for killing the Japanese yet strangely at the midpoint of the movie we discover he can speak Japanese fluently and acts with kindness toward the Japanese without any kind of explanation. It was obviously contrived to show that he is a man with depth, yet he is not a man with depth He is a man that is badly written. Somehow there is a romantic interest introduced into the movie that is suddenly dropped at the half way mark. He shows no interest in the affections of a nurse that showed an interest in him and the whole thing makes me feel like it was introduced for the purpose of showing clips of romance in a trailer.
The friendship with Navaho Indians is contrived. It was obvious from the outset that Nick Cage would be tested with his orders to protect the code. Except there is no drama in this. Nick lets the most valuable code of the war willingly cross into enemy lines during the friendly fire incident. He should have been court marshalled for this yet he received a medal of honour. Probably because he single handedly eliminated a whole enemy platoon.
Japanese soldiers never appear on the horizon, they appear from left, right, behind front, always popping up and screaming so that they can be easily dispatched by one man army Nick cage and his slo-mo director buddy. In war, you have soldiers to protect your flanks.
The scene where the marine threw his chocolate to encourage a Japanese child to run to safety had me laughing out loud and crying with despair as to how it was possible that this movie received any kind of budget at all with such a laughable script.
WindTalkers is the worst war film I have ever seen. The action scenes were pure A-Team and if there were any justice int he world, then Nick Cage and John Woo would be permanently banned from making any further movies.