What’s this all about?
in 1998, Steven Spielberg released Saving Private Ryan, a star-studded World War II epic that masterfully portrayed the insane scale of the second world war while still connecting audiences to the characters on a deep and effective level. America loved it.
In 2002, John Woo said, “hold my beer,” and dropped Windtalkers, which is arguably about the US Navy’s use of native Navajo speakers as radiomen in order to confound Japanese code breakers in the Pacific Theater of World War II.
Unlike Spielberg, Woo uses his star-studded cast to make the war feel small, and to make the characters basically interchangeable. Things blow up. Land mines are stepped on. Nick Cage no-look-kills 6 Japanese attackers with a Colt .45 just like Clint Eastwood in Fist Full of Dollars.
If you like your war movies loud and pointless, but not at all fun, this may be the one for you.
Who is Nick in this one?
Nick plays “Joe Enders,” a USMC Private First Class, with a record of insubordination and petty crime. Through sheer luck, he manages to be the sole surviving member of his platoon in the Solomon Islands. He gets blown up by a grenade, which causes some mild hearing loss, but it also pulls him out of the fight.
Somehow, Nick is the best soldier the USMC has available (hey, there was a war on) and so he’s promoted to Sergeant, and given the role of protecting one of the Navajo “code talkers,” and ultimately, the code itself.
Nick and his comrades fight their way through the Saipan campaign, and learn that the real World War II was the friends that they made along the way.
Nick’s acting is surly and wooden through most of the film, almost like he resents being there. In other parts, he screams manically. Imagine that.
Who else is in this one?
Christian Slater (Jack Nicholson impersonator) plays “Ox,” (no, not the same one from Stripes) a sergeant with the same orders and mission as cage. He serves as a counterpoint to Cage. Slater is friendly and helpful to his Native American counterpart (and everyone else) while Cage is a surly douchebag to his counterpart (and everyone else). In this role, Slater does a fine job, but it’s a role that’s about as deep as a cookie sheet.
Peter Stormare (Fargo) plays “Gunny” (he’s credited as “Hjelmstad,” but I don’t think that name was ever spoken) who is Nick’s superior. He acts like a Captain, but everyone calls him “Gunny,” which is a term typically reserved for Gunnery Sergeants in the USMC, so I don’t know. He’s fine. He looks harried and yells all the time.
Noah Emmerich (Super 8) plays “Chick.” You know how a lot of media aimed at children will insert a child character so that kids watching will have someone to relate to? Chick is apparently there for any morons who are watching the movie. We see his character develop from an idiot who is violently hostile to Native Americans to an idiot who is violently hostile to Asians.
Mark Ruffalo (The Incredible Hulk) plays “Pappas,” a Greek-American marine who everyone just seems to assume will survive. They constantly give him stuff to give to their loved ones in case anything happens to them. Ruffalo does a fine job of emoting “what if something happens to me?” without saying it.
Frances O’Connor (Erotic Stories No, I haven’t seen it) plays Rita, Cage’s nurse. You likely don’t know this actress, but I’m calling her out because her inclusion in the film is bizarre. She nurses Nick back to health (as nurses do) and helps him cheat on a hearing test to get back into the action. Then, she approaches Nick at a bar the night before he ships out, and they share drinks.
Through the rest of the movie, she sends letters to Nick (which he actively avoids reading) all about everything going on at home. She wonders when he will write back, although she must know (being a Navy nurse and all) that the men in his platoon are not allowed to send letters home due to the secrecy of their movements.
Was Woo trying to shove a romance plot into this? If he was, Cage seemed about as interested in it as I was, which is to say, “not at all.”
Adam Beach and Roger Willie play the Native American radiomen that this film is supposed to be about, but their characters are very one dimensional.
Did you see that?
When I was a kid, my grandmother had a drawer full of old pencils that featured rock-hard, unusable erasers. I can remember tearing paper to shreds, and smearing graphite everywhere any time I tried to use them. I assumed that this was just what happened to a pencil when it was stored in the drawer of a sewing machine table for 40 years.
There is a scene in Windtalkers in which a character is writing a letter home. I immediately recognized the crappy pencil eraser in the scene as being the same as those atop my grandmother’s pencils. This made me wonder, did pencils made in 1944 just come from the factory with horrible, useless erasers, and someone had tracked down a faithful recreation in this scene (maybe that’s where the film’s budget went), or did the producers of this film just get their own grandmothers’ pencils, neglecting to notice the badly hardened erasers? I’ll probably never know, but that’s what I was thinking about while Nick sprayed his Tommy gun from the hip into dozens of Imperial Japanese. -Michael
This movie used old stock footage for the sea attacks. It wasn’t even subtle. All of the sudden the quality would go grainy, the picture would lighten, and a blurry ship would be firing its cannons. Then you’d suddenly be back to the film. It was jarring and not done in some artistic way that would make it have a point. -Sarah
What were Nick’s best parts?
Nicks’ acting, it must be said, was very even throughout the film. He was mostly wooden and surly. He was mad about being in the Solomon Islands. Then he was mad about being in the hospital. Then he was mad about being assigned to security duty. Then he was mad about being on Saipan. It’s hard to pick a “best” from that lot. There was one scene that showed Nick drunk. I guess that was the best one. -Michael
I agree. Nick’s character didn’t want to be there and it came across beautifully the entire time. He was irritable and suffered with the fools around him. For me, the scene where he asked to get a new assignment because he couldn’t do his job effectively anymore was the best of it. -Sarah
What were Nick’s worst parts?
During the initial scenes set on the Solomon Islands, Nick screamed nearly non-stop. I get it. The Solomon Islands were a terrible place to serve, but he really leaned into the screaming whilst shooting a gun that he’s not aiming during those scenes. -Michael
I disliked the scenes where he was healing and trying to get back to duty. It goes against the rest of the film. The worst bit of it is when he stood up out of his wheelchair too early to try and walk. It just looked ridiculous to anyone who has worked with someone with walking and balance issues. -Sarah
How was the movie?
Windtalkers had a budget of $115 million dollars, close to twice the budget of Saving Private Ryan. I had to go check that twice. You remember Saving Private Ryan, with its sweeping recreations of the towns, villages and countrysides of mid-century Europe, and its massive scenes with hundreds if not thousands of troops on screen at once?
Somehow, John Woo took twice that budget, and made the Battle of Saipan look like it was fought on a soundstage. Throughout the film, Japanese attackers pop out of the bushes in groups of four or five, only to be machine gunned by a screaming Nick. Then four or five more pop out of another bush. It’s like they couldn’t afford more than five uniforms, so the attackers had to take turns.
The cheapness rises to the level of absurdity when we see a battleship bombarding a Japanese position and the footage of the battleship is clearly grainy, old-fashioned stock footage. The whole film has the feel of a shoestring budget independent film. It cost twice as much as Saving Private Ryan and didn’t have to account for the salaries of Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, or Matt Damon!
By the way, the movie made $78 million at the box office (Saving Private Ryan made $482 million). Great job, John Woo. Great job. -Michael
I’m a bad person to ask. War movies are not my thing. And this one was nothing but a war movie. There really wasn’t enough about the friendship or love interest to even count as subplots. I had nothing to cling to. -Sarah
Yeah, but did you like it?
Look, I’ve seen Guns of Navarone probably a hundred times. I’ve seen Saving Private Ryan dozens of times. I can practically sing along with the lines of The Dirty Dozen. I watched Band of Brothers in about three sittings. To say that I like World War II movies, both brilliant and stupid, would be a gross under representation of my viewing habits.
This movie had me checking my watch to see how much more I had to sit through. It just isn’t any good. Worst of all, it does a bad job of telling the genuinely interesting story of the Navajo who served in World War II. -Michael
Not really.- Sarah
Where can I watch it?
It’s currently free on Tubi.
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