Couldn't finish it

Rating: Null/10 (18 March 2004)

I was asking for pain tonight. I knew this would be a horrible movie, but my wife was out of town and I grabbed a few war movies at the video store.
I had no idea it was this bad. John Woo has made a truly trite, shallow, Z-grade, 1940's war movie. Please kill the writer! It's beyond description how leaden and cliche'd the dialogue is. Witness the crying child, reaching out as his father gets on the bus (of course he's the last one to get on as the door closes and he looks back... GAG!) See the well-worn exchange between the "nurse" and the "grizzled vet." Watch as the Norwegian guy from Fargo & Big Lebowski plays a Marine officer with a very strange accent. It just keeps going down the comode.
I can't help but wonder if the Chinese influence is at work here. Woo's early films, and others in that genre (HK gangster action) rely on the conventions and cliches of American film noir and action cinema. They try very hard to be Western movie stars in a vaguely eastern context. Is that what is happening here?
It's the voice in Windtalkers that gives it away for me. It's so clear that Woo wanted to make a film like "Sands of Iwo Jima" or "Battleground". But he simply copied the surface and not the spirit of those classics. He takes the easy way out.
I have to bitch about the introduction of Cage's character because it will make me feel good to get this out. After watching Thin Red Line, Terrence Malick's flawless film of the Pacific War, I can't help but make comparisons. As Cage is hiking through the jungle, his men are chopped to pieces by bullets, bayonets, and swords. Cage and 3 other forgettables are gathered around a tree trunk to make their last stand. After 2 characters have yelled, "we're out of ammo!", the men continue to pour lead from their eager weapons into the swarming Japanese. As they were on patrol and moving moments ago, Cage now informs the 3 survivors that , "We're MARINES, and we've been ordered to hold the position!" Everyone is handily killed except for Cage (who's name is JOE, perfect for this era of chest-thumping film). After this trauma he works hard to be cold-blooded killer of "Japs". (Actual line of speech from the movie.)
Well it sucked hard. Avoid, avoid, avoid!