Starring: Nicholas Cage, Christian Slater, Adam Beach
Director: John Woo
Rated: MA15+
WINDTALKERS seems to have crowned a bad period for new releases in Australia, for here we have another big-budget dud to avoid.
Joe Enders (Cage) is the only marine left standing from a World War II battle in the Solomon Islands. With a significant hearing deficit and a bad limp he wants to go back into action. He is assigned to protect Ben Yahzee (Beach), one of the Navajo Indian recruits brought in to develop a new code between the men in the field and the US Navy.
With fellow Navajo code maker Charlie Whitehorse (Roger Willie), who is protected by Ox Henderson (Slater), they are sent to retake Micronesia. Saving Private Ryan comes to Saipan.
This classic war genre film has it all: seven long and loud battles; a dysfunctional sole survivor of a previous battle who has decided upon having no close friends; soldiers who speak of their wives or show pictures of their girlfriends to comrades before battle; the raw recruit who confronts a Japanese soldier and cannot kill him; meanwhile, the enemy obligingly stands there waiting for the recruit to make up his mind; and, at the other extreme, thousands of liberally-sprayed bullets that never hit anyone.
Based on the true story of how the US Navy used the Navajo language as their code for the last three years of the Pacific War, any interest in this remarkable tale is lost in the testosterone antics of the battles and the mandatory racism the indigenous Americans must endure in the marines.
While we cannot imagine how dreadful a theatre of war is, the violence here is unrelenting. The most moving moments come when Joe prays the Hail Mary and Ben prays with his son for peace.
With 133 minutes at its disposal in which it could have told a decent story, Windtalkers is full of hot air and evaporates just as quickly.
