Ordinary.

Rating: Null/10 (26 December 2002)

This is not the most original movie ever made. And, yet again, we have another nutcase performance from Nicolas Cage. Other examples of him playing a complete psycho on the brink of madness are BRINGING OUT THE DEAD (crazy ambulance driver) and 8MM (crazy homicide detective). Here, he plays a lunatic army sergeant who is assigned to protect a native soldier who can speak the unbreakable Navajo code language.
(SPOILERS! SPOILERS!) John Woo's battle sequences are not the best I have ever seen. They are quite boring most of the time, as they usually consist of people just getting shot or stabbed and then falling down and then people screaming at each other. When there is fire (there is a lot of fire) things get very hot. The writers liked to write people running around on fire and then having their fellow comrades shoot them so they wouldn't have to suffer. Yeah, this is fine. But when you have it in your movie about three or four times, it gets a little obtuse.
(SPOILERS! SPOILERS!) About 45 minutes to the end of the movie, the battle scenes got better. Only they were predictable. Right from the start of the movie, hell, even before I started watching the movie, I said to myself "I bet they're going to end up killing one of the codebreakers". And yeah, I was right. There is also very little character development and also some very poor attempts at creating humor. I think I laughed once. And, not to mention the acting. Yeah, it's good. Its not the best acting ever, and it certainly won't get any Academy Award nominations, as it is just mediocre. The supporting cast includes Christian Slater, Frances O' Connor, Adam Beach, Brian Van Holt, Peter Stormare, and Noah Emmerich. All of whom are fine. The movie was just not as incredible as I was hoping. I recommend seeing WE WERE SOLDIERS or BLACK HAWK DOWN (a superior war movie) if you liked this.
WINDTALKERS gets 3/5. (average)