Hollywwod at its worst

Rating: Null/10 (20 October 2002)

To begin with, I am a 56 year old male, a veteran of 28 years active duty in the Marine Corps. I am a graduate of both the basic and advanced communications officer courses at Quantico, as well as the career cryptologic officer course at Fort Meade, Maryland. Coincidentally, I was also present at the retirement of one of the last, if not the last, Navajo code talkers from the Marine Corps in 1973. I can't guarantee that I have seen every war movie ever made (both pro- and anti- and neutral on war), but I've probably seen 95% of them. I'm confident that I've seen every talking movie made about Marines.
In my personal and professional opinion, Windtalkers is absolutely the WORST war movie I have ever seen. If someone was born yesterday and had no knowledge of the Navajos' performance for the Corps in WW II, it might rate one tiny point of redeeming social value. But otherwise, the movie not only was useless as a historical portrayal (even a fictionalized one), but it perpetrates a lie as well --- that any Marine was under orders to kill another Marine to prevent him from falling into enemy hands. Suicide MAY have been an option discussed, MURDER was not.
I have neither the time nor patience to list all the faults and inconsistencies with the movie, technical, tactical, moral and simply good storytelling.
Director Woo and lead actor Cage owe the Marine Corps and the American people an apology for perpetrating this travesty on the public.
And for the record, the Navajos were neither the only nor the first native Americans who used their native language to foil enemy communications intercepts.