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Scrambled code
[Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures]
Nicolas Cage, left, is responsible for protecting by any means the code carried in the head of a Navajo U.S. soldier played by Adam Beach. |
By PHILIP BOOTH, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published June 13, 2002
Windtalkers has its good points but falls into predictable traps telling the story of Navajo soldiers who created a special code in World War II.
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Windtalkers, a long, intense combat picture that only occasionally gets mired in schlock, sheds light on an intriguing footnote to World War II history: American soldiers of Navajo descent created a special code, based on their tribal language, that successfully foiled Japanese attempts to intercept classified U.S. military communications.
Several hundred "code talkers," as they came to be known, were vital to Allied success in the Pacific theater. Philip Johnston, the son of a missionary to the Navajos, is credited with the idea. The 29 original Marine code talkers were honored last year with Congressional Gold Medals awarded by President Bush.
So whose story is front and center in the latest film from celebrated action director John Woo (Face/Off, Mission: Impossible 2)? Naturally, it's that of Italian-American Joe Enders (Nicolas Cage), a troubled, heroic combat veteran assigned to keep Navajo recruit Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach) out of harm's way. Enders' unofficial assignment is to "protect the code" by any means necessary, including killing his young charge.
Woo, also one of the film's producers, has learned his Hollywood lessons well after building his career in Hong Kong on such well-received movies as Hard-Boiled and The Killer. A movie starring Cage, a bankable star with whom Woo worked on Face/Off, is far more likely to open big and pull its financial weight at the box office than a film centered on a character played by American Indian actor Beach (Smoke Signals).
That drawback forgiven in the name of pragmatism, several other qualms are worth mentioning. Did anyone suggest to Woo and/or screenwriting team John Rice and Joe Batteer (Blown Away, Chasers) what a corny idea it is to have Marine bodyguard Pete "Ox" Henderson (Christian Slater) pull out his harmonica for a little duet with code talker Charlie Whitehorse (Roger Willie), the latter playing a wooden flutelike instrument? The earthy unity-of-mankind jam is a bit hokey. The score by James Horner (The Perfect Storm) is overblown and intrusive.
Also cliched and considerably annoying is a sequence featuring a melodramatic exchange between soldiers played by Martin Henderson and Mark Ruffalo (You Can Count on Me). Henderson's character, Nellie, is worried that he'll be killed in combat, so he offers his wedding ring to Ruffalo's Pappas for safekeeping. "Don't talk like that," Pappas says. Death wish, anyone?
Enders, racked with survivor's guilt related to a standoff in the Solomon Islands that killed all those under his command, is not so secretly seeking a final exit from his spiritual-emotional malaise. He's a fierce, fearless warrior, apparently immune to the romantic interest expressed by a lovely nurse played by Frances O'Connor (The Importance of Being Earnest).
"I was just following orders," Enders says at one point. His angst becomes the dramatic focal point of Windtalkers, as the newly promoted sergeant develops a friendship with and respect for the Navajo recruit.
Some of the secondary characters are nicely played, although Chick (Noah Emmerich of The Truman Show) is a stick figure, representing a knee-jerk racist who gets re-educated. Swedish actor Peter Stormare (Dancer in the Dark), as a tough commanding officer, delivers his orders with an accent that seems vaguely German; one guesses that wouldn't have gone over well in real life.
Slater, who worked with Woo in Broken Arrow, does his usual lightweight shtick, and rookie Navajo actor Willie is terrific. The other members of Woo's company, including characters played by Ruffalo, Henderson and Brian Van Holt, are underdeveloped.
Woo's battle scenes, longer and bloodier than any such sequences this side of Saving Private Ryan, are smartly photographed and expertly staged. The director creates several terrifically intense moments as Enders and his men, raiding the island of Saipan, time and again barely escape danger.
Woo allows for pockets of startling intimacy, if you will, as hand-to-hand combatants get close enough to see one another. In that respect, Windtalkers is less about the rah-rah spirit of war than it is about the human cost of military conflict. In these troubled times, it's a message worth taking to heart.
Windtalkers
- Grade: B
- Director: John Woo
- Cast: Nicolas Cage, Adam Beach, Peter Stormare, Noah Emmerich, Mark Ruffalo, Christian Slater
- Screenplay: John Rice and Joe Batteer
- Rating: R; graphic war violence; profanity
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