2002's Windtalkers is the semi-fictional tale of two Navajo code-talkers and their USMC "protectors" during the Battle of Saipan in the Pacific during World War II.

The Navajo code-talkers were a very real and very effective weapon in the Pacific theater. Put simply, the Japanese just couldn't figure it out. Check out more in this Wikipedia article....

But that's about where it ends. There's been a lot of unfavorable reviews of Windtalkers, and for the most part I'd have to agree with a lot of it. At times the battle scenes and gunfire gets a little too outrageous to be believed. Taking out four or five enemy soldiers with burst from the old Tommy gun while standing up, and not getting a scratch. Noplace else but Hollywood. Granted a lot of that probably comes from Director John Woo's Hong Kong action flick history, but a little more thought could have gone into it.

I'm not exactly a huge fan of Nicholas Cage either. He brings the same wooden acting to Sgt. Joe Enders as he does to everything else. The whole flashback thing just doesn't seem necessary, except as a counterpoint to a situation he faces later in the film...which is also pretty unrelated to the core story.

On the other hand, Adam Beach's Navajo code-talker Ben Yahzee is an awesome character. He goes from the stoic stereotypical Indian, to just your average Joe, to knife-wielding berserker with ease.

Sure a lot in this film is on the hokey side. Planes flying in and dropping their bombs at an altitude of 30 ft. Huge explosions (actually there's just a few but shown from several different angles) and bullets that don't seem to hit anything. Plus enough World War II movie cliches to choke a horse.

They can't all be works of art, but Windtalkers is still a sound wartime-action movie, if you get past Cage's acting and the technical/effects snafus.



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