Windtalkers

A solidly directed film that became a huge flop. It’s hard to say what went wrong. Perhaps it needed a better script, but what it certainly lacks is at least one scene that would grab the viewer by the heart, though some scenes, especially the ones that present the Indians more closely, e.g. while making music, are sensitively filmed. And Nicolas Cage? He's not a bad actor, I can easily believe him as a soldier, but he is, let's face it, a bit jaded of late and doesn't have the potential to help hold a film commercially anymore. (30/11/2002)

Control question: I wonder, comrades, do you know why there weren't any white doves flying in slow motion? You don’t know, do you? Ha! Look, I’ll tell you exactly, comrades. Such feathers can’t withstand a flamethrower attack! Now you know, but as if you didn't. Otherwise, it’s political subversion and a military trial! Starring a brooding Indian nanny (by the way, it's one of Cage’s acting fails) and her ward, who gradually digs up the war axe on Saipan to split the peace pipe into tiny pieces. Although he didn’t go through training, the most adept codebreaker here turns out to be John Woo, because I still haven’t understood what it was supposed to be about. It wasn’t about passing information in Navajo-American slang on the Pacific battlefield. Is it a slightly pathetic drama about friendship and understanding amidst the chaos of war? Or is it about the inner demons of the white man and subsequent redemption? Or did the producer-pushed director create a pure action film in the style of John Wayne? In that overcooked action, all that was missing was Jean-Claude, arriving on a motorcycle with a funny nineties' hairstyle, kicking some butt on both fighting sides, and mistaking Cage's M1928A1 Thompson submachine gun strap for a rattlesnake, only to bite through it. (13/06/2022)

Even as a simple but effective action movie (see Broken Arrow), Windtalkers would be too slow and ponderous by today’s standards. However, it doesn’t want to be a simple action movie, so it mixes Native American spiritualism and humanism into the firefights and explosions. And it does so to such an extent that the result tastes like a rotten apple. That Native spiritualism is actually quite unbelievable and is in contrast with the gratuitous nature of the heroic action scenes (slow-motion shots of Nicolas Cage after his successful one-man-show action scenes). The gratuitous action scenes also conflict with the whole humanistic level of the film, which is diminished by the depiction of the Japanese as a race worthy of damnation. In short, it is neither proper action in the style of Black Hawk Down nor “something more” in the style of Saving Private Ryan. Someone here either didn’t know what they wanted to make or they just fucked up. (20/08/2002)

I'm pretty disappointed in this. Pretty much. The action doesn't have the bite that the other John Woo films have, Nicolas Cage doesn't really fit, and the story of Christian Slater and Roger Willie was much better and more emotional than the story of the main characters. If I wanted to compare it to Woo’s Hong Kong work, it would be even less so. As it is, it's a slightly above average war movie and a big step down in John Woo's career. (07/08/2002)

John Woo showed everyone what a proper patriotic and pro-American film should look like. Nicolas Cage (Enders) jumped from one foot to the other while shooting hundreds of Japanese soldiers, and then, while injured, he shot a few more soldiers about twenty feet away with just a pistol, without aiming. I could go on about things like this indefinitely. This was what frustrated me the most. Otherwise, the film turned out quite well. All the characters and their fates had something to them. Cage pleasantly surprised me with his performance. I must disagree with the notion that there isn’t much action in the film; I think there was plenty. James Horner's music added the right touch. However, it’s true that some of the dialogue scenes felt quite unnecessary and drawn out. The final shootout and its resolution surprised me a lot. Normally, I would have given this film four stars without much hesitation, but due to Enders' heroic yet unrealistic behavior, as well as that of the other marines, I have to take away that one star, and I give it 70% overall. (24/09/2016)