Movie Reviews from Hell
Windtalkers
| Director: | John Woo |
|---|---|
| Year: | 2002 |
| Rating: |
 |
This is a story about the Navajo Code that was used in the Pacific during World War II. The code was based on the Navajo language, and relied on Navajo radio operators to use it to relay important information between artillery and infantry divisions, in hopes that the Japanese could not crack the code (and they didn't).
Why make a movie about it if you aren't going to take it anywhere? The movie takes you around in circles searching for that special "nowhere" - and passes it and keeps going around the bend, arriving at the same place by the end of the movie.
There has been quite a few American war movies of late (Saving Private Ryan, Men of Honour, The Rules of Engagement, We Were Soldiers, even The Patriot, etc), all very good movies - We Were Soldiers and Saving Private Ryan being some of my favorites.
Most are fairly brutal, as I honestly think they should be, but more importantly, there is a story about a character, group of soldiers, or an entire nation. Most of them are executed with conviction and either have a tale of morality, patriotism, heroism, character change or are in the memory of those who fought for a nation.
Yes, the Navajo fought for America, and this movie is about that. But do I really feel that at the end of the movie? "The code was never broken" was the closing subtitle. Who the hell cares about the code? I'm more interested in the people who made it happen. They left out subtitles for most of the spiritual ceremonies performed by the two leading Navajo characters. I would love to step aside a learn about another culture, but I can't speak Navajo - and thus I find it very hard to relate to what is going on and why it is so important to these characters. More so, why it is so important to the movie itself? Where do we see the results of it?
This movie leads really nowhere. There is the typical sub-theme of overcoming differences with the man standing next to you, but even this dwindles and doesn't lead much anywhere. The problem is lack of progression. All of the attempted sub-plots, themes and the likes are inserted hastily wherever there is room for them - kind of like a soldier in shock not knowing who or what to shoot, and firing off a round here and there to make sure the gun is still in his hands. But again - who knows - maybe that was the genius of the movie and I'm missing it? Regardless, it's a genius I'm not impressed with.
There's plenty of shooting, fighting, gore, and in my opinion, seriously overdone pyrotechnics, but once you've seen Saving Private Ryan, you've seen it all. I think less budget for pyrotechnics and maybe throwing a few dollars towards remastering the blatantly raw stock footage of naval ships firing artillery at shore - only after they've paid for better writers.
So I ask, if the point of this movie was really to honour the Navajo soldiers who fought in World War II, why didn't it really do it's job with the same conviction that We Were Soldiers did for Moore and his men? Or was the movie made just because no recent war movies have flied the American flag in the same shot as the face of a Navajo child? If you ask me, I think they were checking if the gun was still in their hands.