Movie: Windtalkers
Director: John Woo
Cast: Nicholas Cage, Adam Beach, Mark Ruffalo, Christian Slater, Noah Emmerich, Peter Stormare
Rating: **1/2
John Woo’s “Windtalkers” was supposed to be a tribute to Navajo Indian code talkers who used obscure language to secretly communicate during World War II and helped the United States Marine Corps win the war in the Pacific. It should have been a story told from the perspective of a Navajo, their role during wartime, struggle and sacrifice, but it instead focuses on a heroic white character played by Cage, an Italian-American. Woo, Hong Kong’s action expert focuses more on the action and very less on the chapter of Navajo Indians which is not widely known and deserves to be told to the world. As a result, we get footage of bloody battle scenes, in which bodies are torn into pieces and soldiers are killed like they’re in a video game.
A group of Navajo Indians, known as code talkers, are enrolled into the Second World War by the United States Marine to help them develop unbreakable secret codes, using Native-American ancient language. US Marine is facing a hard time fighting the Japs, as they have been successfully breaking all their secret codes whenever they radio for air support from base. It’s only with the support of the Indians can the US Marine win the war. Each Navajo is assigned to a Sergeant, whose job is to protect them and the code at all cost. This means he shouldn’t hesitate to kill the Navajos in order to protect the code.
Inundated with clichés that are usually associated with war films, Woo tries to make his own “Saving Private Ryan”. For instance, you can easily predict that one of the soldiers in these type of films has to be a racist, that there will be romance between a nurse and a solider she attends to and help recuperate, and a scene in which a soldier saves the life of the man who hates him. And, of course, we have so much of action just because this is a war film. One should know that any film doesn’t become a “Saving Private Ryan” or “We Were Soldiers” by merely focusing on the battle scenes; it needs to go beyond it to give us reasons to root for it. “Windtalkers”, which should have ideally focused on the saga of Navajos, mostly concentrates on the battle sequences, inter-cutting to scenes with some emotional drama, friendship and a lot more.
Had it been an indie feature, we would’ve seen the film focus more on Navajos characters, qualities and concerns. But it isn’t and instead is a big-budget action feature with a major star and lot of explosions. It’s either on war or on the issues between the characters Woo focuses on, limiting the film’s prospect of succeeding as a human drama against the war backdrop. He never takes interest in giving the Navajos story a personal touch, which would’ve allowed us to see the war through the eyes of an Indian. It needed to be seen like that. Even the battle sequences are too bloody, but never awe-inspiring.
Woo kills almost every character you may like in the film. It’s understandable that this is a war film, and therefore, characters getting killed are inevitable. But by killing almost every important character and sparing the stars, Woo fails to rewrite the war-movie formulas. Cage is the only character of any depth, while Beach, who is not a bad actor, has limited scope to perform.