Rated R - Running Time: 2:13 - Released 6/14/02
WINDTALKERS
Rated R - Running Time: 2:13 - Released 6/14/02
In Captain Corelli's
Mandolin, Nicolas Cage played an Italian guy in World
War II. He's at it again, except this time he's switched sides.
In John Woo's Windtalkers, a story about the Native Americans
whose language was the basis for an unbreakable code used in combat
radio transmissions, Cage plays Italian-American Marine Sgt. Joe
Enders, who is assigned to guard and protect one of these Navajo
radio men. Director Woo, who made movies in his native China for
nearly 30 years before breaking into American films, has a long-standing
reputation for action-packed thrillers—his occidental entries
include Broken Arrow, Face/Off, and Mission:
Impossible II—and he certainly does not stray from
his established style with this one. Windtalkers, while
nicely filmed and ostensibly about race relations and the difficulty
of following orders, is as brutal as they come, with a near-oversaturation
of violent war footage, suffering, and death. While some may have
used this fascinating subject matter to craft a serious drama
with historical significance, Woo and his writers, John Rice and
Joe Batteer, choose instead to stay with the high-octane action
format.
The film begins on the Solomon Islands during a brutal 1943
battle against the Japanese, where Enders suffers the loss of
his entire group, not to mention his equilibrium and the hearing
in his left ear, thanks to a grenade that explodes at close range.
Although he is not fit for return to combat, he enlists the help
of a comely young nurse (Frances O'Connor) to help him fake his
way back into action. His next assignment is to play bodyguard
to newly-enlisted Pvt. Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach, Smoke
Signals), with the coldly mercinary understanding that
if Yahzee is ever in danger of being taken captive by the enemy,
Enders is to execute him rather than risk having him divulge the
secrets of the Navajo code language. "Your mission is to
protect the code," his commanding officer tells him.
While Yahzee and his Indian friend, Pvt. Charles Whitehorse (Navajo
American and Gulf War veteran Roger Willie in his acting debut)
are blissfully unaware of their superiors' deadly orders, Enders
and fellow sergeant Peter 'Ox' Henderson (Christian Slater), who
is assigned as Whitehorse's guardian, discuss whether or not they
could fulfill these orders if it ever became necessary. That is
to say, Henderson talks and Enders rudely ignores him, as he does
everyone in the movie, apparently suffering from the sort of "battle
fatigue" that makes you rudely ignore everyone.
After this introductory period, the group is assigned to serve
on Saipan, where they encounter 30,000 Japanese soldiers who have
no intention of letting the island be taken, and the gruesome
and deafening violence of the situation is played out in the most
graphic terms, with soldiers being shot, burned, blown up, and/or
decapitated, while doing the same to the Japanese. Meanwhile,
Yahzee and Whitehorse endure the racial prejudice of some of the
other men, like one particularly annoying corporal (Noah Emmerich),
while Enders pops pills to counteract his vertigo and hears the
voices of his fallen men echoing in his melted ear. And sure enough,
there eventually, inevitably comes the time when the Indians are
likely to be taken prisoner. What to do, what to do.
This is certainly an exciting movie; director Woo has little trouble executing the reality of the horror and racheting up the tension. I wish there had been more time spent on the Navajo code and less on graphic violence, and Cage's characterization was more annoying than sympathetic to me. But what are you gonna do—it's blockbuster season. ****