Almost Awful: Not Really Worth Viewing

Rating: 2/10 (11 July 2010)

Nicholas Cage like Ruth Gordon plays one role repetitively. He is no Sean Penn. Ostensively about Native Americans using their native languages as code during the battle for the Pacific during the Second World War, this John Woo film instead fruitlessly exploits exhausted war film clichés. Writers John Rice and John Batteer seem not to have taken interest in the Navaho code-talkers. Too bad that they did not because that theme intrigues me.
As usual, John Woo choreographs elaborate action sequences. No one does that better than he does, even Spielberg—I suppose, but the battle scenes seem unremittingly implausible.
Editing by Jeff Gullo, Steven Kemper, and Tom Rolf is professional but unable to undo the essential phoniness of the script and direction. Photography by Jeffrey Kimball is similarly wasted effort. James Horner's musical score is lovely but again wasted on a bad movie.