It's No Platoon, But It Can't Lose.

Rating: 8/10 (6 January 2015)

To me, any war or sci-fi movie is a guaranteed winner. The construction of sets and direction or battles sequences and special effects all have to be at very high degrees in order to look even remotely real. In order for a war or sci-fi movie to be bad, the sets, special effects, and battles scenes all have to be poorly done. I have encountered some sci-fis that had poor CGI, but I have not yet seen a badly made war movie. Even heavily clichéd war movies have realistic violence and spectacular action sequences. I noticed Windtalkers got bad reviews, but everybody must admit it was good for what it had.
Windtalkers is about a group of soldiers (including Nicolas Cage, Christian Slater, Mark Ruffalo, and Noah Emmerich) during World War II who must protect two Navajo soldiers from the Japanese, as they are the only ones that understand the codes in Navajo language. I am not a history guru nor an expert on any wars, so I very much enjoyed this. John Woo is an action master that did great action scenes and the acting is great by almost all. There was some bad acting, but most were good. Nicolas Cage was good, as this was before his string of bad movies like Ghost Rider and Bangkok Dangerous. He is our main character who is similar to Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now and Charlie Sheen in Platoon--all men are haunted by the horrors of war. The story is a little slow, but is sugarcoated with great action. Also, there are nice shots such as the opening scene as the camera hovers around mountains in the desert. The music, provided by legendary James Horner makes every little thing that much greater. What I saw critics and general reviews poke at the most was the fact that the Navajo soldiers were minor characters and that there was no "windtalking" or codecracking. That would be my biggest complaint. It is clear that this draws influence from previous war classics, mainly Platoon and Saving Private Ryan, and this may be inferior to those, but it is still and great flick.
3/4