Windtalkers (2002)

Surprisingly good.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. The characters were believable without drowning in their own melodrama. The action scenes were graphic but not gratuitous. I would highly recommend it! You can understand how Nicholas Cage's character is inevitably drawn into a relationship. Adam Beach's character was credible and not the least bit stereotyped. I half expected his character to be some Hollywood Native American step and fetch it but that was definitely not the case. He was wonderful and provided an insightful, nuanced performance. March 25, 2008

Boo for Woo

Windtalkers: a story of a young Navajo Codetalker, fighting on the battlegrounds of Saipan. Windtalkers: Woo's pathetic attempt to elevate Native Americans from Hollywood's Tonto. So, why give this movie three stars? The actors in this movie were superb.
Newcomer, Adam Beach (and his gorgeous smile) did a fine job holding his own against co-star Nicholas Cage (whose slight eye and body movements were underscored by a terrible score). Lovable Mark Ruffalo zips in and out of scenes, provoding a strong character you pray makes it home alive. There are also numerous cameos and small roles given to the old-timers like Peter Stormare and Jason Isaacs add to the movie's strong cast.
While it is obvious that Woo had military consutants, he cheapened it with Hollywood melodrama. Over-the-top war scenes with rolling while simutaneously shooting, arm flailing deaths, and the curses at comrades between gurgling mouthfulls of blood. The abrupt closeups throughout the movie add wonderful cheese; it was perhaps the best special effect in the whole movie! The score's cliche cords threatened to overpower the actors and hindered the movie greatly. Let's not forget about the historically askew storyline, in which Marines are charged with killing codetalkers should they be caputred; it cheapens the history of the U.S. Marine Corps and Native American Codetalkers.
If you're looking for a historically acurate (or close to acurate) drama, Windtalkers is not it. I wouldn't buy this movie, but it's worth the money at Blockbuster. For now, the world still waits for a good movie about Native American codetalkers. March 15, 2008

Breaking Windtalkers

This movie would be vastly improved by being dubbed in the Navajo language with subtitles written by Woody Allen. January 11, 2008

Natives never got their medals

In the brutal World War II Battle of Saipan, Sergeant Joe Enders (Nicolas Cage) guards and ultimately befriends Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach), a young Navajo trained in the one wartime code never broken by the Jananese, the Navajo Code. But if Yahzee should fall into Japanese hands, how far will Enders go to save the military's most powerful secret?

Plenty of Native humor and insight from the Navajo perspective. Solid acting and good film. Pity that none of the Native people have recieved their medals. October 22, 2007

Pretty Terrible

This is an action movie, not a war film in the tradition of the realistic classics we've been lucky enough to have released in the last decade. This is one of those stories in which you are required to shut your brain off in order for it to succeed. Here in John Woo's pseudo-Schwarzeneggerian version of World War Two, rifles never seem to run out of ammo, a grenade can clear an entire hillside the size of two football fields, and the morality of war is as monochromatic as an old church tract. I say all this with disappointment, because the subject of the Windtalkers deserves its time on the big screen, and it deserves much better than what it had here in this completely stupid insult to modern intelligence and the memory of the men about whom it was supposed to be. July 31, 2007

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