Windtalkers (2002)

Since September 11th, war movies have been at a premium, capitalizing on the surge of patriotism and pride. Some, like Black Hawk Down, have been superb. Others, like Behind Enemy Lines, were the same old crap in new shoes. Windtalkers falls somewhere in between.

John Woo directs this based-on-true-events story of Navajo codetalkers in World War II's Pacific theater. After having numerous military codes broken by the Japanese, the Marines turned to a new system based on the Navajo language. The code completely stumped the Japanese and was instrumental in their defeat. But the success of the code made its protection much more important, and bodyguards were assigned to some codetalkers to ensure that the code would never fall into enemy hands.

Nicholas Cage plays Sgt. Joe Enders, a Marine whose blind adherence to orders makes him the perfect man to saddle with the morally difficult issue of preventing the capture of the code. Cage's performance is predictably Cage-like. He acts all brave and fearless in battle, and stumbles around drunk and melancholy at night. At least here he doesn't use the crappy Southern accent that plagued other roles, including Con Air. I imagine it was Woo who pushed to have Cage for the role, and though I'd hoped the decision would turn out to be a good one, it didn't.

I really hated the casting of Peter Stormare as Gunnery Sgt. Hjelmstad. Stormare was the guy with the Russian accent in Fargo, the lead nihilist in The Big Lebowski, and the cosmonaut in Armageddon, among other roles. But here I couldn't for the life of me figure out what accent he was trying to use. It seemed to drift from Scottish to Russian to Southern in course of a single sentence. The rest of his performance was fine, but I was so distracted by the accent that I found him more annoying than anything.

The plot is pretty predictable and pedestrian. It's typical of every partner movie, where the outsider comes in (in this case, the Navajo radiomen Ben Yahzee and Charlie Whitehorse) and gets paired with the reluctant partner, Cage. There's awkwardness and conflict at first, made worse by Cage's "troubled" character, but by the end they're the best of friends and willing to lay down their lives for each other. And of course there's the redneck soldier who hates Injuns but gets saved by Yahzee and changes his mind. The writing credits go to John Rice and Joe Bateer, and I guarantee they did this one in their sleep.

The action is pretty much the only strong point of the film. The effects and fight choreography are done well for the most part, but sometimes feel a bit contrived and gratuitous. It sometimes seems as though it's there just for its own sake, rather than to really advance the story. There's a detached feeling to it that isn't nearly as gripping as the likes of Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down.

In the end, Windtalkers is good in that it brings attention to the greatly overlooked contributions of the Navajos in World War II, and does so in a reverent and non-exploitative manner. But with the exception of the history lesson, you've already seen this movie before, so you might as well wait for the rental.