Cheap Eats
By Dan Leone

Our Masthead

Editorial Staff

Business Staff

Jobs & Internships

WAR IS BAD . War is hell. What is it good for? In Windtalkers, a ripping endorphin rush and not much else. That's because John Woo is once again conducting large-scale battles the likes of which haven't been seen since his 1990 Vietnam epic A Bullet in the Head. We're not talking about one guy (the usual suspect being Chow Yun-fat) holding two pistols and falling down a flight of stairs while firing backward (à la A Better Tomorrow). Here, supersize, camo-clad Woo with military surplus at his disposal equals superlative movie carnage on the scale of Sam Peckinpah's WWII tale Cross of Iron. But again: War is bad. War is hell. So how does Woo manage make it such a blast to watch? Probably because the downtime in Windtalkers is so unstimulating by comparison. There's a solid premise ("inspired by actual events"): a group of Navajo code talkers, including Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach), come under the protection of a bitter and emotionally ravaged Joe Enders (Nicolas Cage) during the battle of Saipan. But instead of examining larger issues (like maybe the ambivalence Native Americans might have felt in defending a country and a government that hadn't treated them all that well), the film is quickly taken over by every tired war movie cliché in the book, a trend typified by a scene in which Cage's character gets a groan-inducing Dear John letter more painful to the audience than to himself. It is only near the end that Windtalkers finally seems to come together. In the heat of combat, Woo-ness dictates that nothing matters except male bonding with bullets. War, as well as the talky bits in Windtalkers, may be hell, but the hot-blooded spirit of Hong Kong action film still makes for a thrilling theater of operations. (Patrick Macias)