Nicholas Cage??? Why him??? Very under achieving....

Rating: 4/10 (15 June 2002)

Ok first of all, I am not going to sugar coat any of this. I went with my girlfriend and spent over $20 expecting a good 2+ hours of entertainment, and what I got was ripped off!!! If I had been at home watching this on dvd, I'd have turned it off and finished it sometime other than a Friday night, like say a Tuesday afternoon when there is nothing else to do. We had deliberated for a bit about whether to see Insomnia, Enough or The Bourne Identity, and about half way through the movie, I couldn't help but wonder how much more entertained I'd have been at any one of those than I currently was. Not that I think there are many movies worth spending $14 on (not counting snacks) to see in a theater, but at least I wouldn't have been sitting there comparing Windtalkers to Saving Private Ryan and wondering why nobody else can make a war movie as compelling as Spielberg and Tom Hanks combined to do.
When the movie first started, the camera spanned across the beautiful desert landscape in Arizona where the Navajo Indians lived, while the background music was reminiscent of that in the beginning of Saving Private Ryan in the cemetery scene. It was at this point that I took in the moment believing that what I was about to watch would be one of those rare movies that you never forget about as long as you live. It opened by zooming in on Adam Beach, soon to be Private Ben Yahzee, holding his baby son just before joining a bus load of Navajo Indians who were all heading off to the Marines to learn the "code" based on the Navajo language. On the bus, Roger Willie, soon to be Private Charles Whitehorse, was introduced as a friend of Yahzee's who you could tell right off the bat was only in the movie to play that proverbial good natured, wiser, older fellow who has a good sense of humor to give us some comedy relief. You know what I mean, that character that the audience is suppose to relate to and like, who almost always dies in the end in some weak attempt to make us shed a tear. Not that he does die or not, but at this point in the movie that is what I was thinking....I wont give away any individual's destination here in case you still want to waste your money on this Hollywood piece of crap for some reason.
In the next scene, we are introduced to Nicholas Cage's character, Joe Enders. It really catches the audience off guard the way the semi automatic rattles off a series of shots unexpectedly, startling everyone in the theater and getting some follow up chuckles afterwards from those who jumped out of their seats the highest. I believe that this was the high point in the movie unfortunately, as never again did anything get a rise out of me or get my heart pounding like that did.
Anyways, in this scene Cage plays a Marine (Enders) who fell into command for the first time ever after the former commander lost his life in the heat of the battle. Enders refuses to retreat and continues to obey the order which is to hold a useless piece of swamp land at the end of nowhere with the Japanese closing in everywhere. Even despite everyone begging him and pleading to retreat, seeing that they were all going to die if they stayed, he just orders them to hold their position thus everyone but Enders, somehow of course, ends up dead. But not until a very cheesy one liner by a friend of his as he takes several bullets in the back while Enders was face to face with him trying to pull him up over a barrier to safety. As Ender's friend is dying, he looks Enders in the eyes and calls him a son of a bitch. Of course then, this ends up haunting Enders for the rest of the movie, as he later blames himself (original isn't it) for everyone dying, despite the fact he was just following orders. At this point I think I knew that the movie was headed for mediocrity at best, and I was only 10 minutes into it. Sad.
I could go on in more detail but what's the point, I think you see where this is going. If you've seen even one preview for this movie then you already know that it is Sgt Ender's (Cage) job to protect the code at any cost, even if it means executing the "Windtalker" (Private Yahzee) if it looks like he is going to fall into enemy hands. Do I even have to spell out how this movie ends? In the beginning of the movie he lets his men die while being the lone survivor, and it haunts him forever. Then in the end he has a decision to make about the lives of his men once again. It doesn't take a Harvard graduate to see how it ends. Very predictable and boring, let me tell you.
I didn't like at all how they made every piece of artillery be as accurate as you could possibly imagine. Every time the camera zoomed in on some artillery as it was being fired, the target ALWAYS got hit, no matter what. And according to this movie, almost every Japanese soldier was too uncoordinated to shoot anyone before the Americans shot them first, even if the Japanese soldiers had a 5 second head start advantage. If this is how it was in real life then I don't know what took so long to end the war. There is nothing like having a dozen Japanese soldiers with machine guns jumping out of everywhere on all sides of Nicholas Cage and every other co-star in the movie, only to have Cage or someone else pull out a pistol or a knife and kill all of the Japanese first. Great job Hollywood.
Just for the record, Nicholas Cage did NOT, I say did NOT, sell me on being a Marine in any way, shape or form. As a matter of fact, I can't think of any actor that would have been worse for that lead role. He should stick to roles like he had in the Family Man.
Actually, I don't care what actor you get to play Sgt Enders, the movie shouldn't have revolved around him and his haunting flashbacks where he got everyone killed in the beginning of the movie. It was called Windtalkers, thus you'd think that the movie would have been centered around the Navajo Indians that served the United States as Marines. Nicholas Cage's character was about as uncompelling as you could get, and I was shocked that the movie was centered so much around him. It didn't help either that Cage acted like the guy he played in "Leaving Las Vegas" in between battles. Even though it was called Windtalkers, it seemed as though the Navajo's who were the "windtalkers" were almost a sidenote to Sgt. Enders' plight to redeem himself in the war. The movie should have been called "Sgt. Enders", seriously. They had a great concept with the Navajo language being used as a code that the Japanese couldn't crack, but they mucked it up with a predictable story line that didn't even really delve into the Navajo's importance in the war.
One other thing, I was very bored with how outlandish Hollywood made every explosion seem. They'd zoom in on the artillery that was firing on something, then cut away to the target, then we'd see the target explode in slow motion way too often as they were really trying to overdo every explosion. Hey Hollywood, when are you going to stop trying to make up for a lack of a compelling story line and actors that can pull it off, with fiery, loud explosions and slow motion takes of people flailing through the air? And they could have done away with all the symphonic background music behind every battle. Did they not learn anything from Saving Private Ryan? It is better to just leave that background music out of the picture, cause I want to feel like I am a part of the picture like I did with Saving Private Ryan. I don't think the soldiers who were there in real life were listening to an orchestra playing in the background, picking up momentum as they gained leverage on the enemy. I hate that crap so bad. Too much Hollywood for me.
One final note - The acting in this movie was some of the worst I've ever seen, aside from Adam Beach who played Private Ben Yahzee, the main windtalker, and Roger Willie who played the other windtalker. They were the only actors who looked natural as everyone else just looked like they were just standing there waiting for the camera to scroll over to them so they could say their one liner when it was their turn.

Very under achieving, very disappointing. The idea of doing a movie about how the Navajo's contributed to winning the war by using their native language to encrypt the Americans' code was great. Too bad the movie didn't actually revolve around that.