Misplaced Focus Missed Opportunity

Rating: 7/10 (19 December 2014)

During World War II, Navajos were recruited by the U.S. military to send and transmit messages in a code based on their complex language; the Japanese were never able to crack the code, and the tale of these Navajos and their contribution to winning the war in the Pacific would have made an engrossing film. John Woo's "Windtalkers" starts promisingly with a young Navajo, Ben Yahzee, played by Adam Beach, bidding his family goodbye and boarding a bus to join the army. While the early days of Yahzee's indoctrination and training in the Navajo-based code are touched upon, the film soon veers away and follows Sergeant Joe Enders, played by Nicolas Cage, whose sometimes contrived story is more conventional and less interesting than that of the Navajo recruits. Cage is assigned to protect Beach and his knowledge of the code from capture by the Japanese; Beach is unaware that Cage has been instructed to kill him rather than let him fall into Japanese hands.
"Windtalkers" does detail the prejudice and persecution endured by the Navajos from both other enlisted men and their superiors, although to say the Navajos resemble the Japanese is an implausible stretch. Beach and Roger Willie as Charlie Whitehorse are the only two Navajo characters with any screen time. While Beach is a Canadian Saulteaux and studied Navajo for the film, Willie is a Navajo of the Wateredge Clan. Although Cage gives a solid performance as Enders and is ably supported by Christian Slater, Mark Ruffalo, Noah Emmerich, and Peter Stornare, the excellently conceived and filmed battle scenes upstage the actors. Often gruesomely graphic, John Woo stages sweeping battlefield scenes that are exhilarating and spectacular. Planes swoop overhead, bombs detonate and send streamers of shrapnel into the air, flame throwers ignite tanks and soldiers alike, and the camera moves in to capture a human torch or a savage bayoneting in closeup. The action and lush green Hawaiian shooting locations are beautifully captured by Jeffrey L. Kimball's excellent cinematography, and a fine James Horner score further enhances the film.
A solid cast, good production values, stunningly realistic battle scenes, "Windtalkers" has a lot going for it, but ultimately the film missed an opportunity to recount a fascinating footnote to World War II history. The movie begins and ends amidst the majestic splendor of Monument Valley and does pay passing homage to the contribution of the Navajos to the war effort and final victory. However, the focus has been misplaced on a white solder rather than on the Navajos, which lessens the film's import. Instead of a classic retelling of a near-forgotten story, "Windtalkers" is a well acted, but routine war movie with some spectacular battle scenes that come perilously close to overwhelming the personal stories.