Flashpot Psychology

Rating: Null/10 (7 July 2009)

Any war movie that conveniently stops all extraneous sound—that is, battle—so that characters can give other characters thoughtful speeches or looks is going to wear the patience of the viewer to the breaking point very quickly. John Woo's Windtalkers (2002) is just such a movie, a sloppy, messy, and incompetent story of the Navajo contribution to America's victory against Imperial Japan. Whatever drama that can be found with the ground-breaking use of the totally alien (at least to the Japanese) Navajo language as the basis for a combat code is lost with the five cent psychology and movie-of-the-week histrionic heroics.
The story itself is fascinating—Navajo men with a good grasp of their language were trained as radio operators and deployed with U.S. Marine units in the island-hopping operations of the Pacific War. Adam Beach, the Canadian actor who was so great in Smoke Signals, and played another marine, Ira Hayes, in Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers, is the principal character here, alongside his hardened and hard-hearted "handler," Nicolas Cage, an emotionally wrecked "China Marine" who takes the job of watching over—and killing Beach if he is about to be captured—as a way to get back into the war, after recuperating from injuries on Guadalcanal.
The contrast between Cage and Beach is adequate. You don't expect much from Cage because he's vitiated much of his acting "street cred" with one Jerry Bruckheimer role after another (he seems more at ease in the National Treasure franchise than in something serious) and Beach is so charismatic that it's obvious Woo was having to rein him in, in order to keep him from stealing every scene from Cage. There are obligatory secondary characters—the tough gunnery sergeant, the more religious Navajo friend of Beach (if you look closely, you can see a small, neon "Dead" sign over this character, along with several others), and, because this is Hollywood and all combat units are microcosm melting-pots (and large, blonde white guys are naturally obnoxious Hitler Youth), there's a large, blonde bigot who questions the Navajos' presence in the war because "they look just like the 'Nips'."
Everything about Windtalkers reeks of cheap and thrown-together. It's painful to watch such a wonderful, multi-layered story of American natives casting aside old angers to protect what Beach refers to as "my land, my country" rendered into a junior high school-level shoot-em-up. The script seems cobbled together from a dozen 40s and 50s war movies (at any moment, you expect John Wayne—who played a character similar to Cage's in The Sands of Iwo Jima, and a whole lot better—to tell everyone to "Saddle up; let's get back in the war!"
Even the special effects are all over the battlefield. We get Saving Private Ryan savagery, along with some nice CGI carrier-based aircraft, but those damn-silly artillery explosions. Howitzer rounds go bang (dirt and things go flying) but Woo figured he had to dazzle the viewer with lots of color, so we get these ridiculous gasoline flashpots going up when a mortar round hits a group of soldiers (how many times were the troops told not to put fifty gallons of lighter fluid in their Zippos, dammit?).
The non-verbal messages are, if anything, less important and more overbearing than the spoken words. The flashback is a classic film device for filling in the holes in a story (or telling it in a non-linear way), and so is the "reaction" shot. When something profound happens in Windtalkers, the viewer gets some of that five cent psychology by viewing deep, meaningful stares. The non-verbal meaningfulisms are so heavy-handed that when, in a moment for Cage that shows he saw The Sands of Iwo Jima over and over before filming started here, where he draws a cathedral in flour on a table, then grunts in disgust at himself for showing weakness and destroys the drawing, you're hoping a war correspondent runs in to take a photo of the cathedral before Cage wipes it out.
Aw, shucks, Sgt. Rock has a heart of gold!
Cage's equal in the platoon, played by Christian Slater (neon "Dead" sign) is assigned to another Navajo. Repeatedly warned not to warm to his charge, Slater violates his orders by striking up a musical relationship with him. The message of equality and friendship between a Navajo and the son of a Swedish immigrant is mostly unspoken (the music is produced by native flute and harmonica). Unfortunately, the friendship results in disaster. When confronted with following his orders, Slater can't bring himself to kill his friend, and it's left up to Cage to do Slater's dirty work.
The truth of the engagement—and the underlying orders to "protect the code" is revealed to Beach by Cage. Beach isn't skilled enough—or isn't given enough directorial guidance—to avoid falling into an acting trap. His unspoken rage at and mistrust of Cage is displayed in an almost comical . . . dirty look. Wayne could do it, so could Kirk Douglas. Eastwood had that murderous glare that accompanied "Well, do ya punk?!" Beach didn't have it here. I kept expecting him to point at Cage and let loose with a Marvin the Martian impression, "Oooh, you make me sooo angree!"
The trouble with Windtalkers is that, because it's hackneyed to begin with, there's a ripple effect of silliness throughout the movie. A good premise with a bad script is going to result in a stilted mess of a movie. Besides spouting cringe-inducing dialogue, the emotional points of the movie are hammered home (right through my forehead sometimes) with glowering reactions shots. "Hey, he's a rednecked moron" is what we already know about the platoon bigot from his words and behavior. Having him come to this conclusion, stopping in the middle of a marching column, looking as if he has worked mightily and has given birth to a thought, is just overkill.
The spoken and unspoken words of Windtalkers devalue the whole noble story.