Overly enthusiastic John Woo detracts from a great story line....

Rating: 4/10 (19 October 2002)

The premise of this film is potentially a fantastic account of Navajo code speakers during the battle for the South Pacific in WWII. John Woo's portrayal of characters, battle scene's and reality in this film is a shameful exercise in "dazzling the viewer into oblivion". The battle scenes are a sequence of movie cliche scenarios with the addition of extreme gore. We have become used to the "real" look used in "Saving Private Ryan" and "Black Hawk Down", but this is just plain gratuitous. Just as ample are the "Fourth of July" battle scenes. No relation to reality here. Finally, I don't know how Mr. Woo persuades these actors and actresses to perform some of the scenes they did. He must have told them the outcome would look much different after editing. Nicholas Cage is no stranger to action flicks, where he has performed admirably in the past, but he definitely couldn't pull this one out with the guidance of Mr. Woo. The cast seemed promising and I won't hold this film against them in the future, unless they do a John Woo again.