The worst film I've seen in 10 years

Rating: Null/10 (15 August 2002)

Well, where should I start? This film is so monumentally bad it almost defies description, but here goes:
I normally have a lot of respect for Nick Cage, he plays his roles well, but in this he seems to play every cliché in the book. He is Sergeant Joe Enders, a man seemingly so disturbed by the loss of his platoon that he's popping pills every five minutes, and constantly losing himself in flashbacks. He can't hear one minute, and is fine the next, and develops a love interest so cheesy, clichéd and predictable that you half expect something more interesting to be going on... But it isn't. Adam Beach plays a reasonably convincing Ben Yahzee, a Navaho Indian who signed up to help protect his country as a code-talking radio operator, but isn't quite ready for combat. We all know the drill here, it's the seasoned disaffected veteran and fresh faced rookie "getting to know you" double act that we've seen a million times in a million different scenarios.
I defy anyone not to roll their eyes back in their heads and say "oh my god" at least once in this movie. Peter Stormare's attempt at an American accent should get most people going, but if that doesn't do it for you how about a Harmonica / Weird Native American flute thing duet, or the tedious love letter scenes, in fact just about every scene elicited the same response: WHY?
To call this film derivative is being generous, to even compare it to another film is doing that film a disservice, Imagine World War 2 being fought by the most idiotic bunch of soldiers you've ever seen. The gun battles are hilarious, they are so unrealistic you wonder who the hell said "yes, that looks good, let's put that in the movie" because whoever it was sure smokem um peace pipe that day. Nick Cage seems to be the only person who can actually fire a gun, and boy can he fire it, he mows down at least 8 people in one scene with a single clip, holding down the trigger, making his game face and spraying wildly into the air. You can see in some scenes he's not even pointing the gun at them and they're Falling over dead. Apparently getting your whole unit killed gives you some kind of super powers that allow you to run headlong into the enemy and shoot anyone without ever getting hit. The explosions and effects are all very cheap, it looks more like a fireworks display than a battle most of the time. In one scene, a battleship shells the land from out at sea. It literally looks like someone's taken some footage of a battleship firing from CNN, and spliced it into the movie.
I could go on for many many more pages about all the bad points of this movie but I won't, suffice to say AVOID IT LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDED ON IT.