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One of the worst films in a long time

If you like seeing Nicholas Cage looking fatigued but resolute, interspersed with Nicholas Cage looking resolute but fatigued then you're in for a real treat. However you would be in for an even bigger treat if he could do it well.100% dull and boring. 100% Hollywood sentimental bilge. 100% lacking in flow or story fabric.I sat through this film marveling at the utter lack of direction. I was left speechless by the sheer sameness of the acting throughout. An epic venture in futility (which is about the only sense in which it captured the concept of war).

Saipan Nightmare

The war scenes in the movie are very real and effective (at times, repulsive). The sentimental relationship between the two main characters Joe Enders and Yahzee is well depicted. The only weak point in the movie is that neither the remaining characters nor the Navajo codebreaking are sufficiently emphasized. If you took Enders and Yahzee out, the film would look like a good documentary.
Nicolas Cage is once more very good in the role of an unhappy man who has nothing left to expect from life. The film is advisable even to those who don't like war films, just for the wonderful acting of him.

Hardcore WWII Movie Fans Will Like it

Nicholas Cage is usually good in anything he does and John Woo did a good job of directing. The war scenes are riveting and could not be done better. We see some introspective in five of the characters, Sgt. Enders, Yahzee, Sgt. Anderson, Charlie Whitehorse, and Chick. The rest are poorly developed. We hope to see the story of the Windtalkers but it is never truly developed completely. We see there is a Navaho code developed, and Tank is Turtle in that code. Then we see Cage told he must defend his code talker and the code itself above all. Most of the rest the movie is battle scenes but we periodically see a sprinkling of code talkers telling enemy coordinates to one another for support or shooting the breeze about what is happening in their company. Although very interesting it doesn't touch us emotionally like Private Ryan did. I think with a little more character development, especially the Indians, it would have been a great movie. When Yahzee gets mad at Sgt. Enders and runs around wildly killing Japanese without concern for those trying to protect him, it didn't endear me to him. I think if they had cast Wes Studi also, it would have been even better. This said this is still a movie worth owning. I certainly bought it on DVD.

Horrible and offensive

Windtalkers is by far the worst, most offensive, film that I have seen in a long, long time.Nicolas Cage is horrible, there is no story, and John Woo seems to think that blowing soldiers up is fun and entertaining, not to mention how insulting it is to Native Americans because it hardly deals with their role in WW II (another major failing of this movie, seeing as though that is what it was supposed to be about!) and in general deals with them in the most superficial of ways - ways which we haven't seen since the 1950's! Production value is horrible - you can tell a lot of it was shot on a sound stage with a fog machine just off screen.All this for $100 million dollars - ugh!

Duck!

Synopsis: In the Pacific theatre in World War II, the U.S. armed services developed a secure radio code based on the Navajo language. Navajo servicemen recruited as radio operators, or "codetalkers," were assigned guards to protect them and the vital code they carried - or kill them if they were in imminent danger of capture by the Japanese. Windtalkers tells the story of Marine codetalker (Adam Beach) and the sergeant assigned to guard him (Nicholas Cage) as they participate in the invasion of Saipan. It also follows a similar relationship between another codetalker (Roger Willie) and his protector (Christian Slater).

Joe Enders is a guy with a lot on his mind. First, there is the guilt. As a corporal in the Solomon Islands invasion, Enders abruptly inherited a small unit command when both his superiors were killed - and then just as quickly lost all his men in a Japanese counterattack. The lone survivor of the attack, he is sent to a naval hospital in Hawaii to recuperate, but he conceals a painful injury in order to return to combat. Instead of being allowed to return to the front lines, Joe is assigned to protect a wet-behind-the-ears codetalker named Ben Yahzee. Already traumatized by failing to save his old unit, Joe is in no mood to make friends with Ben, knowing that he might someday be forced to kill him in order to protect the code he carries. You know just where this movie is going.

There's a point somewhere in Windtalkers when the viewer begins to ask questions. And that's not a good thing. Like, with about a bazillion Marines on Saipan, how come there aren't any officers? You've got a gunnery sergeant (Peter Stormare) running what appears to be about a battalion of guys. No knock on sergeants, but I don't think that's the way it's supposed to work, even in the Marine Corps. And at the end of the movie, when a couple hundred Marines with tanks, trucks, and such are getting the snot kicked out of them by Japanese artillery: why is it up to one lone codetalker - in an entirely different location, separated from his radio and pinned down under fire - to call in an air strike? You mean to tell me there isn't a single radio in that whole convoy of beleaguered grunts? How are they communicating with each other, semaphore? I guess that's what happens when you don't have any officers around.

And there are other questions that are ultimately more ruinous to the success of this movie. What is the story about? The codetalkers? Joe Enders? The contrasting relationships between the codetalkers and their protectors? The conquest of Saipan? And how does any sort of relationship develop between Enders and the people in his life when he doesn't say two words to anyone? Early in the movie, the obligatory beautiful nurse (Frances O'Connor) falls for Joe, cares for him, pursues him with unanswered letters throughout the rest of the film - and he never gives her the time of day. Why does she bother? For that matter, it's hard to see why anyone does anything they do in this picture. Characters turn about-face in attitude and behavior so often at the whim of the plot that there must have been a minor epidemic of whiplash during the filming.

Even that wouldn't be such a bad thing if the plot were worth all the contrivances necessary to advance it. Unfortunately, Windtalkers is an encyclopedia of the hoariest war movie cliches: the haunted soldier who watched others die due to his mistakes; the medical condition (call it "Old Movie Disease") that debilitates the hero while somehow allowing him to fight on; the bigoted antagonist who is brought around to see the light; the young newcomer who proves his worth to the unit by an act of stupendous bravery; and so on.

Windtalkers is cliched visually as well. War films like Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, and HBO's Band of Brothers have raised the bar when it comes to realism and viewer involvement. In their wake, John Woo's trademark pyrotechnic style seems dated, even quaint, and his material trivial.

The biggest problem with Windtalkers, though, is Nicholas Cage. Cage is capable of being a very fine actor with a good emotional range, as evidenced by roles in movies as varied as Leaving Las Vegas and Moonstruck. Here, though, he seems clearly uncomfortable in a monotonous, clench-jawed performance as Joe Enders. The script, by John Rice and Joe Batteer, is execrable; but a lower-key actor like Billy Bob Thornton could probably have redeemed it somewhat by injecting a bit more nuance than Cage can summon. The rest of the casting is uneven as well, with Stormare particularly distracting as a Swede trying to fake an American accent.

The wartime contribution of the Navajo codetalkers is interesting grist for a movie. It's too bad Windtalkers doesn't come near to doing it justice.

hows your white man?

In the close quarters and brutal fighting of the World War II Pacific Theater, the U.S. Intelligence services desperately seek a fool-proof encryption code, immune to the code breakers of the Japanese. The answer is soon discovered in the ancient language of the Navajo. Enlisted into the Marine Corps are several "Windtalkers" who are deployed to front-line areas in the Pacific, to use their language as an impossible-to-crack secret code. A drawback, however, is that the U.S. military soon puts forth a directive that the Windtalkers must never be captured alive by the enemy, so additional Marines are assigned to make certain that this directive is carried out to the letter...A good premise and a good book, is given the Hollywood polish via the gift of John Woo and Nicolas cage in full serious mode. it's not a very good combination, i'm sad to say.Released in a time when we had four years worth of serious war movies, thanks to Saving Private Ryan, it lacks character development, storytelling and a good source of narrative. just as we begin to learn a little about some of the characters, Woo decides to go for stereotyping and unleashing the power of slow motion and pyrotechnics.we have the racist soldier, who is saved by a Navajo.we have the soldier who is always going on about his wife, obviously he gets blown up.Cage tries to ignore Beach, and just 'protect the code', they end up good friends.a couple of good set pieces cannot cover the fact that this is trying to hard to be like a real war masterpiece, the score doesn't go with the film, and it's at least twenty minutes too long.having not seen the directors cut, i cannot compare, but it's supposed to be a lot better, but can i justify the fact that i need to sit through bloated character development and predictable characters?i usually love the work of Cage and Woo and Face/Off is a fantastic movie.this is more like Face/It....mediocre film making..

historical pictures

I really liked this movie and Nicolas Cage does a wondeful job starring as a battle scarred Sergeant recruited to protect a Navajo "codetalker" from falling into Japanese hands during the Saipan battle of 1945. The only problem I had with this movie is that they didn't show enough of the Navajo telling the coordinates during major battles, but it's still a pretty good war flick.

Excellent movie

One of the best movies I have seen. Very realistic like and true. Shows a lot of blood but hey, that was how war was like. There was a flaw in the movie though that the movie should have reflected more on how the navajos used their code rather than World War 2 battle scenes. One flaw, but everything else was good.

Too much Gas

The Navajo men who helped America defeat Japan get some much needed credit by this movie, but they deserved better than this. The problems with this movie include bad special effects, an in-cohesive story, clichéd ideas and lack of strong climax. I've seen some explosions from artillery and it doesn't look like what is presented in this movie--unless of course the Japanese soldiers where all hauling cans of gas with them in the jungle. Most large explosions were very gaseous in nature. Big flames and lack of explosive intensity mark the typical boom in this movie. The story was all over the place. Was it about the sarge (Cage) or was it about the code-talkers? It should have been about the code-talkers, but Enders was a huge distraction to the story line. It wasn't Cage's fault. They could have played him as that type of character without digressing from the code-talkers. Also, there were some good battle scenes but the Marines had many heroes and not just one guy doing everything in each battle. Since they were showing the battle of Saipan, why not at least show what the Japanese civilians did? Many of them,taught that the Marines were savages, tossed themselves off of cliffs in effort to avoid Americans. Already, others have discussed the clichéd lines and scenes. There are many. Enough said. The climax was predictable.In case you want to see the movie, I will just say it was weak because of the problems in the story development.This is not the worst war movie there is. It was OK if you ignore Cage's character as much as possible and give attention to the code-talkers. That is a challenge, but at least you would learn something about them.

John Woo's Worst

I came into this film with high expectations. John Woo is one of my favorite directors, and he was re-teaming with the man he got the best performance out of in all of his American films, Nic Cage in "Face/Off". Add that to my love of war films, and I thought this would be a winner.

Sadly, the film dissapoints on nearly every level. The opening, showing Cage leading a doomed patrol, looks like it was filmed on a soundstage, and is so poorly acted and shot that I had to wonder if Woo had somehow turned the reigns over to Joel Schumaker. Anyway, back to the story.

Cage recovers, and eventually is assigned to protect a "codetalker", a Navajo Indian who's language has been used by the Marines as a code that the Japaneses cannot break. Cage's orders:protect the code at all costs, even if it means killing his comrade in arms if he is in danger of being captured. Cage's codetalker, Ben Yahzee, is amiably played by Adam Beach, and the most interesting parts of trhe story are how Yahzee and his fellow Navajo are trained and how they interact with those who are assigned to protect them. Sadly, not much of this interaction is shown, as Woo goes so far over the top in the battle scenes, both in scale and level of heroics, that you have to wonder if six people took down the Japanese all by themselves against incredible odds.

Other negatives include the cliched "Minority soldier challenged by racist comrade" subplot, that is resolved just as predictably as you might think. The score is also way over the top, with James Horner seeming to forget all the lessons he learned from his Star Trek scoring to his work on Titanic. In all the film is John Woo's worst, worse even than "Mission: Impossible 2", which is hard to top. I worry about Woo now, as he's only made two entertaining American films, "Face/Off" & "Hard Target(For Van Damme, it's fun), and only "Face/Off" is on par with his Hong Kong films. Maybe he should head back home for inspiration, and stop making the formulaic action pics that Hollywood is famous for.

Warning: This movie is NOT what it claims to be

This movie hyped itself to feature the efforts of the Navajo indians during WWII and the usage of their language as code. Less than 10% of this movie is actually about the Navajo indians' contribution to the Pacific War effort and mostly about the Nicolas Cage character and his problems. I was very disappointed.

Unrealistic and reoocuring shortcomings

Sorry, but i really tried to enjoy this movie but it just didn't work out. This movie was the worst and the most unrealistic war-movie i have ever watched. I really tried to find some excuse for the shortcomings in the movie but i couldn't. John Woo have apparently never held and surely never fired a gun. He must also lack some basic information about how a gun works. In the movie Nicolas Cage a.k.a super hero number one, kills all his enemies by hitting the ground, dirt and rocks flies in the air, it looks cool but , people don't die if they aren't hit. in almost every combatscene this is a reoccuring problem with the movie and as a viewer of it i didn´t know whether to cry or laugh..

Horrible Film.

This movie is full of cliches, bad acting, and gratuitous, stupid violence. Nicholas Cage becomes the consummate overactor as he unsuccessfully attempts to portray conflicted emotions. He looks like Bill Shatner's Kirk transplanted into the 1940's Pacific theatre. It's pathetic and John Woo seems to think that he can cover it up with explosions. Every five minutes my wife and I would look at each other and say, "There hasn't been an explosion for a while," and at that point Woo would indulge us with some more unnecessary pyrotechnics. The explosions become boring due to the fact that they seem to occur in mind-numbingly large groups. Eventually you'll conclude that they're just there to wake you up from the coma that you've fallen into as your brain punishes you for watching this film.

But ultimately, the explosions aren't able to distract from the horrible war-movie dialog. One guy actually gives his wedding ring to a buddy with the request that it be given to his wife because he has a premonition of dying. The buddy, of course, gives it back and says, "No man, you're gonna live." Guess who dies in the next scene. Ditto with the infantryman carrying the flame thrower who says, "I'm wearing a Zippo lighter on my back!" There were many others, but my mind has prevailed in deleting them from memory. Thank goodness.

No, wait! I almost forgot! The Japanese soldiers! Their attack method is to run at you until you shoot them dead! Will they fire at you? Who cares? Their aim is worse than any Star Wars Storm Trooper! It turns out that our fighting men didn't do such a mighty thing defeating the Japanese Empire because none of their soldiers could kill you. Thanks for that insight, John Woo!

Bloated, self-absorbed, cliche and unrealistic.

Bloated, self-absorbed, cliche and unrealistic. The movie features some ridiculous action sequences that are more Rambo 3 than Saving Private Ryan. With one exception, character development sucks. Truly a joke next to other contemporary WWII movies.

Another Cage flop....

Nicolas is not chosing his screenplays correctley...

WINDTALKER should have been called EMPYTTALKERS. God, nothing happens here, it's a total waste of time and money. They had a good plot concept, but they exploded it.

hollywood finally recognizes our native-american soldiers

Native-Americans are the most patriotic Americans we have .With more Native-Americans enlisting in the army,navy or air force per Native American than Latin-American,African-American or Caucasian American.It's great to see them recognied.We could never have made it through world war 2 without the code breakers.

Of Historic Importance..But...Longwinded

This review refers to "Windtalkers" DVD

Nicolas Cage plays Joe Enders a wounded Marine, soul survivor of 15 men fighting a battle during WWII. He is a Marine through and through. He wants to get back to battle and even fakes his wellness to be released from the hospital. Still feeling the sting of the guilt by the loss of his men, he is given a new assignment. To protect and guard with his own life, that of a Navajo soldier. One of an exceptional group, that has been intensely trained in the art of wartime code. Ben Yahzee is considered THE Code, and must be protected at all costs, never to fall into the hands of the Japanese.


Enders is unhappy with this assignment, but he lives by a code as well... To Do Or Die. Although resentful of the "babysitting" job, he obeys his orders to the fullest. Putting himself in harm's way to protect "the code". Yahzee does his job of decoding and does it well, but must endure physical abuse and racial slurs from some of the other soldiers. As Enders sees the importance of Yahzee's existence to the war, and gets to know him as a person, he begins to warm to him and eventually holds him in the highest esteem.


I love War films, especially WWII films, and most especially, those based on actual events. I have viewed this film twice over the last few years, and twice it lost me a little over halfway through the 2 hours and 15 minutes of it. The story, Directed by action great John Woo, is an important one to American History and one that makes us aware of the very integral part the "Windtalkers" played in the war. Probably saving hundreds of lives by their own heroic actions.Maybe it's Nicolas Cage as a soldier(I didn't care too much for "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" either) but mostly, I just felt it took too long to tell the story. The script did not allow me to feel about the characters the same way I did,say, for the soldiers in Saving Private Ryan, that had to protect Ryan with their own lives. The action sequences were great, but there was so much of it, it was hard to warm to the personal stories.


If you have already seen this film and liked it more then me, I can tell you that the DVD is an excellent quality. Clear picture and fabulous color. The sound is outstanding. The sounds of war are going on all around you.

also avaiable here in full screen dvd: Windtalkers


Probably a good rental for war and history buffs or just to see what the "Windtalkers" were all about, but may not stand up to repeated viewings. The film did spark my interest enough to read more about the "Windtalkers" and I have found some books on the subject available here at Amazon......Laurie


more on war:(see my reviews for book or film details)
Into the DMZ A Battle History of Operation Hickory, May 1967, Vietnam
A Bridge Too Far
Schindler's List: Images of the Steven Spielberg Film

working title - Windtalkers, A Waste of Your Time

This movie is the worst kind of movie - not good enough to be mediocre, not bad enough to enjoy ironically. If you want to see a well executed war movie, quickly overlook this one. The premise had potential, but it was very poorly executed by focusing on Cage's overdeveloped character. With no intriguing plot structure one naturally looks to the battle scenes for some saving grace, but yet again the viewer comes up short. The mind-numbingly long and rambling battle scenes retain the quality of a low budget cable movie, again not in that bad enough to enjoy ironically way. Stuntmen fling themselves to and fro after comically unrealistic explosions detonate in a setting that in no way resembles the Pacific front lines. The southern Californian shrubbery is a dead give away. Camera moves are staid and boring, which does nothing to enhance the disastrous fight sequences. I would rate this movie as "unwatchable" except that I continued to watch it out of some perverse human sensation one gets when slowing down to observe a traffic accident. Instead I will rate this movie UNFATHOMABLY AWFUL. Save your money and your time by not watching it.

Good flick but not Woo's best.

Windtalkers was indeed a good movie. Personally, it hits the middle of the road on my path to greatness. One of the biggest problems with Windtalkers is that John Woo tried to combine a real, life-like war movie, with his standard brand of extravagant explosions and amazing gun fights. Those two combinations don't mix. While you are watching, you get the feeling that Woo wanted to put in choreographed gunfights that make your jaw drop, but cut short of amazing you in order to capture the realism of war (despite the large amount of shots coming from rifles with only 5 or 6 shots in the bandolier). The worst part of the movie is that it never grabbed my attention. I couldn't keep my eyes glued to the screen like i did with The Bourne Identity.Other than those facts, the movie was good. The story was a bit stagnant and didn't flow too well but the acting more than made up for it. Nic Cage played the part of the reluctant hero who doesn't care about anything but making up for his screw up perfectly. You believe that he is really ready to die. Adam Beach did very well as the Navaho code-talker who has a sort of naivety about his situation until Cage kills his fellow code-talker as part of his orders (Beach goes war-nuts at this point and becomes a psycho soldier hell bent on revenge...muy believable).All in all, it is a good night at the movie but i doubt it will go down as one of the best war movies ever. Unfortunately, John Woo has never made a movie better than the classic Hard-Boiled but he is getting close.

Action in war, but it is missing something else...

The Marine Joe Enders (Nicolas Cage) is the sole survivor of previous combat where his whole platoon was massacred after which he had to take command upon the death of the platoon leader. At a military hospital he regains his strength, but he suffers from permanent hearing loss and a damaged balance system. However, a caring nurse helps him cheat on a hearing test, which enables him to regain his combative status. His survival in combat is observed as useful by the Marine Crops and they assign him on a mission to protect the Navajo solider, Ben Yahzee, whose objective is to send code in his own language. This code is an unsolved enigma for the Japanese forces, however, they are attempting to capture and torture anyone who knows the code in order to help themselves. Thus, it is essential that Joe protects the code at all costs as they invade the island of Saipan. Windtalkers is a fascinating story and the moral dilemma which Joe faces is equally interesting. However, the score in the film is played all too frequently and it generates a cheesy atmosphere that seems contradictory to the dilemma. In addition, there is some awkwardness in the combative scenes that resembles Achilles' godlike presence, which seems far fetched and similar to the shooting scenes in John Woo's earlier films. The enemy also seems to be far too stupid, in comparison to what they really were, which diminish the feeling of realism. Lastly, Windtalkers provides an action packed cinematic experience, which fails in addressing the questions at hand and leaves the audience with an empty reaction.