Bad Beyond Words

Rating: 1/10 (18 May 2002)

The war movie genre typically centers around an attempt to enlighten the general public about the horrors of war, which no one could ever possibly imagine without having physically fought in one himself. While no movie can fully capture the depth and depravity faced by those engaged in combat, some do a better job of it than others. Windtalkers, while attempting to do justice to a true story, simply presents vain images and poorly-directed scenes that any avid movie watcher should see as a disgrace to the men on whom the story is based. Although I doubt that I would be giving anything away that isn't completely obvious from the movie's start, I will still warn that there are very mild spoilers present in the following review.
After the main characters are presented and the conflicts have begun, it is entirely obvious how the movie will end; you know who dies and who doesn't, and the plot follows that of the typical entry into this genre. War movies are hardly ever about the final result, however, but instead about the journey the characters embark on and the emotional transitions they exhibit along the way. In Windtalkers, unfortunately the journey is unremarkable, and the characters don't change. The `emotional drama' is played out like that of a weak soap opera, and many of the characters serve no purpose in the story except to detract from the movie's true focus. It almost seems like the writers were so preoccupied with adding unnecessary characters that they forgot to give any character to the movie itself.
Adding to my disappointment with the characters in the movie were the all-around weak performances given by the actors. Christian Slater, while not speaking in a monotone voice typical of Keanu Reeves, still manages to achieve monotony by uttering throughout the entire movie an annoying, contrived Southern accent and (as usual) gives the worst performance. Even Nicolas Cage demonstrates his ineptitude for highly emotional roles, and Adam Beach manages to embody little of the glory and honor he should. The result of these lackluster characters is a series of unintentionally humorous scenes, the worst being a `getting to know you' moment where Slater sits down to play a harmonica along with the elderly Navajo man playing a whistle. In addition, everyone apparently is compelled to share a boring memory of his grandpa or reminisce about the good times he had with his wife, and these touchy-feely scenes become too predictably spaced after the first eight or nine the viewer is forced to sit through.
The battle scenes in Windtalkers are no better. Each tries to capture the power and feeling accomplished in good war movies like Saving Private Ryan, yet all pale in comparison. Due to blatantly obvious special effects, the images of warships that look like black and white documentaries from the 1960s, and screams so fake they make low-budget horror movies seem like Oscar material, I can't think of a war movie in which combat was so poorly directed.
Amid all the fallibilities of this movie, one would still expect some sort of moral theme to transcend. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. The closest the moviemakers come to providing a reason for this film's production is the banal idea of friendship against all odds. Such a `theme' has been used countless times in movies, and thus it comes across as redundant and cheesy. In fact, cheesy is how I'd describe the entire movie, as I've seen episodes of the Ninety and Nine Club that were more realistic and touching. To be fair, under competent hands, the movie might have provided an adequate entry into a genre that has long been flooded, but as it stands, Windtalkers is a journey you'll soon want to forget.