There's No Wow to this Woo Saga

Rating: 6/10 (8 March 2008)

Clichés fly like shrapnel in the violent, often explosive World War II combat epic "Windtalkers," co-starring big-screen action icons Nicolas Cage & Christian Slater. As staged by veteran Hong Kong action maestro John Woo, this exciting but unexceptional patriotic tribute to the Navajo Indian radio operators whose native tongue provided a code that the Japanese couldn't crack gives the short shrift not only to the tribe but also history. The uninspired John "Blown Away" Rice & Joe "Chasers" Batteer screenplay suffers from a bad case of battle fatigue and furnishes little insight into why the military chose the Navajo language. Of course, Hollywood doesn't spend millions to make historically accurate tales because distorting the facts drums up greater dramatic impact. Nevertheless, despite its graphic depiction of war, "Windtalkers" treats the Navajo code as a disposable plot device to enliven its mediocre melodramatics.
Nicolas Cage's empathic performance as a conscientious Marine non-com, however, manages to bolster this odd-fashioned, formulaic fodder. Cage plays twice decorated Marine Corps. Sergeant Joe Enders who survived the sanguinary campaign in the Solomon Islands in 1942 with a perforated eardrum and winds up in a comfortable Hawaiian hospital. Sympathetic U.S. Navy nurse Rita Swelton (Francis O'Conner of "Bedazzled') helps Enders fool his physicians into clearing him for combat when he really cannot hear as well with his damaged left ear as he pretends. After he resumes active duty, Enders finds himself ordered to act as a bodyguard for Navajo radio code talker Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach of "Flags of Our Fathers"), but there is a catch. Ender's superiors warn him that he must take his Navajo buddy's life if it ever appears that Yahzee might fall into the hands of the enemy. Meanwhile, Sergeant Pete "Ox" Anderson (Christian Slater of "True Romance') teams up with Ben's Navajo buddy Charlie Whitehorse (real-life Navajo Roger Willie of "Adaptation") as the Leathernecks land on the Jap-infested island of Saipan in the last days of the Pacific war.
Incredibly, "Windtalkers" concentrates more on Cage's traumatized Italian-American Marine sergeant than on either of the Navajos or the code itself. Of course, neither Adam Beach nor Charlie Whitehorse has an adequate marquee value compared to Cage. Nevertheless, why couldn't Cage have played a code talker? Furthermore, the filmmakers chronicle nothing of singular significance about the bloody Saipan campaign in their two-hour plus guts, gore, and glory saga. Aside from the Cage character, neither scripters John Rice nor John Batteer make any of the character more than one-dimensional ciphers. About the only thing that Rice and Batteer avoid is giving their cookie-cutter character the obligatory speeches that sabotaged Steven Spielberg's hopelessly sentimental "Saving Private Ryan" (1998) and Terence Malick's pompous art house pabulum "The Thin Red Line" (1998).
Audiences that crave gory, blood-splattered heroics will get this fill. Woo blows up trucks, jeeps, tanks, and artillery galore with his usual exuberant fireball abandon when he isn't blasting soldiers to bits. These violent scenes have been orchestrated with typical Woo panache and serve as textbook examples of how to handle violence. Perhaps the only thing that distinguishes "Windtalkers" is its politically incorrect treatment of the Japanese enemy. Ironically, director John Woo portrays them the way that Hollywood westerns once exploited Native Americans as anonymous savages.