Deserves the scorn it receives...but it is funny

Rating: 5/10 (28 April 2009)

I thought that since the release of Saving Private Ryan, World War Two movies had moved into the realm of the ultra-serious, but this ain't the case with Windtalkers, which somehow manages to be utterly ridiculous, boring, and hilarious.
Nicholas Cage is Joe Enders, a guy who watched all his buddies getting wasted before surviving a direct hit from a grenade. After miraculously recovering, he is sent to Saipan to watch over a Navajo radio operator, who is using some new encryption to call in air strikes. We follow the two, and their fellow soldiers, as they lay waste to Saipan and several thousand Japanese soldiers.
The film drags at first as we're introduced to various squad members: the standoffish Enders, the Navajo guy, the other Navajo guy, the redneck racist, the family man, and Christian Slater, but when they reach Saipan things kick into gear.
Every grenade explodes with the power of a 20 megaton warhead. Each bullet fired by Cage brings down 10 Japanese soldiers, who don't use cover but just run straight at the marines. Cage's squad always seems to sprout new marines to be blown into the air. Every action scene takes places in a storm of explosions. Most of the marines are indestructible until the script says it's time for them to die.
...and now and again, the fighting stops, so the men can gather round a campfire and wonder what the war is really about...
...But not for long as another 100,000 Japanese guys charge towards them, starting yet another protracted battle sequence.
The worrying thing about Windtalkers is that even at first glance there's dozens of moments where you're thinking 'this is really stupid' or 'that's completely clichéd' or 'well, that bit was quite funny'. I guess it all depends how you approach films in general.
Best bit: They can't get through a fortified Japanese position, so Cage and Navajo simply walk around the back. Magic.