Windtalkers **
Directed by: John Woo
Written by: John Rice and Joe Batteer
Starring: Nicholas Cage, Adam Beach, Peter Stormare, Roger Willie, Noah Emmerich and Christian Slater
Rated R (It’s a war movie. And it’s directed by John Woo.)
Dear Hollywood,
While it’s admirable that you are broadening your horizons by bringing in talent from overseas, perhaps you should let a director make the movie he or she wants to make, instead of making them make what you think audiences want to see.
Sincerely,
Grant Bennett
I really, really wanted to like Windtalkers. I really, really like John Woo and his films. American film audiences owe him a debt of gratitude. Ever see a character in a movie jump through the air holding 2 .45s in slow motion? John Woo invented that. Ever see a movie with a gunfight in a church? That’s his invention, too. You can bet that Quentin Tarantino has seen all of Woo’s films at least twice. John Woo practically invented a genre of film – the ‘blood opera’. Blood operas are very, very violent, but not gratuitously so. The violence is essential to the story, but the focus is on characters. Not too many characters, however.
Windtalkers, while not based on a true story per se, is based around the US Military’s use of the Navajo language as the basis for a code during World War II. Navajo code was the only unbreakable code in the war. Ben Yahzee (Beach) and Charles Whitehorse (Willie) are two private code talkers. In order to protect the code, each is assigned a Marine as a bodyguard. Yahzee has Sgt. Joe Anders (Cage), and Whitehorse has Sgt. Peter “Ox” Henderson (Slater). The task of the bodyguards is to protect the code, not necessarily the code talker. Themes like racism, family, friendship, duty and honor are addressed, people get shot, Nicholas Cage gets blown up like 7 times, and America wins the war, eventually. This story takes place fairly early in the Pacific campaign.
When I first saw a preview for this movie, I was all kinds of excited. “Woah! A new John Woo movie! And it’s a war movie! How can this not rock?” Well, I’m sad to say that there are several ways in which it failed to rock.
First of all, 2 words: stock footage. And not just any stock footage. I’m talking about stock footage that was clearly taken from video. Secondly, airplanes. I don’t know if the airplanes were CGI or models, but, either way, there were scale problems. Thirdly, John Woo wasn’t allowed to make a John Woo movie.
I’m sure that most of you have seen at least one John Woo movie. He directed Face/Off, Mission: Impossible II, Broken Arrow and his unfortunate American debut, Hard Target. All of these movies were action movies. All of them except Hard Target were very good action movies. But, John Woo is not an action movie director – he is a dramatic director who uses action in his stories. His movies are centered around doomed, tragic relationships, loneliness, misunderstanding, trust and redemption. Thusfar, he hasn’t made a John Woo movie in America, which is unfortunate. Especially since in Windtalkers he really could have made a masterpiece.
I don’t know for a fact that Woo was forced to make changes in his film, but it sure felt and looked like it. There are some scenes that are classic Woo – characters playing music because they like to play music, very strong friendships, characters self-destructing after a tragedy, nearly every John Woo hallmark is present, including camera work. But there are others that seem like the executive producer said, “Hey, ya know that really neat part in Saving Private Ryan? Why don’t you put something like that in. Oh, and, you know how in most of your movies you have like 3 primary characters? Well, if your stuff is good with 3, it’d be even better with, oh, I dunno, 4 primaries and like 10 supporting characters! What? Of course you’ll have time to develop all of the characters fully!”
I can’t say that I absolutely didn’t like this movie. It had some absolutely wonderful moments, but, it usually followed those moments up with cliches. I am just disappointed in Windtalkers, and in Hollywood for thinking that American audiences are too stupid to understand things like ‘emotion’ and ‘high tragedy’. That’s right – Hollywood thinks that American audiences are dumb. But, you and I both know better.
If you’re in the mood for a REAL John Woo movie, I’d suggest renting The Killer or Hard Boiled. They’re in Chinese with English subtitles since they were made in Hong Kong, but, that shouldn’t bother you. If you’re not in the mood for a HK John Woo flick, rent Face/Off, which also has Nicholas Cage.
