- Windtalker - Film Review (2002)

 
Here is my second attempt on writing a film review on this site

From Mission Impossible, Broken Arrow to Face/off, John Woo movies has been known for their splendid explosions and action. It’s what makes his movies so entertaining since his days of directing foreign films. But what’s left besides the glorifying action is the bad character development, overarching storyline and unnecessary dialogue – such cases as the Windtalker.
 

 John Woo seems to like scaling up the action sequences...

Nicholas Cage plays Sergeant Joe Enders - recently shell-shocked that left him out of comfort through past tragic events. Who after accounts of stupid dialogue with a nurse, Rita is thrush back into war with a objective – protecting two Navajo Marines, Yahtzee and Whitehorse who plays a essential role on radio in frequencies for support. Employed to the front-lines in the Pacific islands, both Enders and Yahtzee faces a dilemma with each other as it then is compensated with wide-panned action

 AHHH! MY EAR!

sequences fit for teenagers to watch because of the lack of gore.

While this premise is based on the events in World War II which uses this ‘’technology/code’’ to prevent the Japanese code breakers from eavesdropping, the real story was based on communication with this language across the channels of the radio but the only communication is between calling artillery/air support and was compensated with Enders’ bland life and dialogue that any war film could possibly be.

In addition, the action sequences where you see Enders and later Yahtzee in the frontlines – acting like Rambo as a one man army and killing hordes of Japanese seems ridiculous and unrealistic even though it’s a John Woo movie. Besides the corny action sequences, the unnecessary dialogue with the marines, a musical duel with Whitehorse and Harrigan – the relationship with Enders and Yahtzee feels unlikable and cliché with the dilemmas that are short-played by bad character development, also the stereotypical marine that misplaces him as Jap and centers on that type of racial segregation and identity of the Navajo people.

 

Pros And Cons

 
Pros - Action sequences look awesome, plenty of gore and violence
 
Cons - Acting, unneccessar scenes, bad character development, historically inaccurate, boring and dumb ending
 

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