Windtalkers

Name: Windtalkers
Genre: Action, History, Romance, War
Released: June 14, 2002
Duration: 134 min
Rating: 51
Cast: Adam Beach, Nicolas Cage

2002

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Mixed or average reviews based on 35 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 42 Ratings

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6.1	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 42 Ratings

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Windtalkers

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Movie Details & Credits

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Distributing Corporation (MGM) | Release Date: June 14, 2002 | R

Starring: Adam Beach, Nicolas Cage

Summary: In 1942, several hundred Navajo Americans were recruited as Marines and trained to use their language as code. In John Woo's Windtalkers, Marine Joe Enders (Cage) is assigned to protect Ben Yahzee (Beach) -- a Navajo Code Talker, the Marines' new secret weapon. (MGM)

Director: John Woo

Genre(s): Action, History, Romance, War

Rating: R

Runtime: 134 min

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Critic Reviews

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Despite some of the sentimentality that is also Woo's stock-in-trade, I was moved and absorbed throughout. Read full review

Stephanie Zacharek

Windtalkers is the best of Woo's American movies, and the one with the sturdiest and most direct links to his earlier pictures. Read full review

Michael Sragow

Woo's antiwar intentions and his talent are at odds. In Windtalkers, war is a beautiful hell.

Peter Travers

The code talkers deserved better than a hollow tribute. Read full review

A.O. Scott

We can only view Windtalkers with the same shaken detachment that characterizes Mr. Cage's Joe Enders, wishing that the codetalkers' real story, a little known and fascinating chunk of American history, had been given its true dramatic import. Read full review

Jack Mathews

The strength of Windtalkers is in its occasional, all-too-short respites from battle, when Enders is struggling with his demons and Yahzee is trying to understand his aloofness.

Joe Morgenstern

The Navajos must have sent much more crucial messages at much higher levels during the war, but you'd never know it from this movie. Windtalkers is practically all action and no talk.

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User Reviews

gzayas91

Jul 24, 2018

This is not one of John Woo's strong films, this is one of those middle of road films. It's just exist and I'm just indifferent to this.

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PeterS.

Sep 25, 2005

Strange that a film with so much bloody carnage could be so unexciting.

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FilipeNeto

Jul 11, 2020

This war film is very slightly based on the story of Native American soldiers, who contributed to the war effort during World War II by creating a secret military code based on their languages. The code was very important for US military communications during the Pacific conflict, but IThis war film is very slightly based on the story of Native American soldiers, who contributed to the war effort during World War II by creating a secret military code based on their languages. The code was very important for US military communications during the Pacific conflict, but I don't think the truth of the facts in this film goes much further than this.

The film takes place mostly during the fierce Battle of Saipan, in which the Americans and the Japanese fought for control of the Mariana Islands. In the middle of that is Sergeant Joe Enders, back in action after being seriously wounded. He has the mission of protecting a Navajo radio operator specialized in that native secret code, or killing him, if his capture by the Japanese is imminent.

Directed by John Woo, it is an action-packed film where most of the time is spent in the heat of combat. Therefore, I believe it will not be surprising if I say that the script is quite flawed and that history is limited to taking us from fight to fight, with breaks for more intimate moments among soldiers, where dialogue and nostalgia abound. At a certain point, we no longer know why they are fighting there. The characters were not very well thought out, as we never cared much for them. In return, the film has enough action to entertain us if we don't think too much about it.

The cast does not deserve particular attention either. There are a lot of big names, starting with the obvious protagonist Nicolas Cage, but they haven't done anything remarkable. Cage is similar to dozens of his other works in action films and seems unable to leave that record. Adam Beach did a satisfying but superficial job because he has no material to truly shine deepening his interpretation, nor does his character seem to have been cut out for it. Christian Slater, Mark Ruffalo, Noah Emmerich, Peter Stormare... all were underused and sometimes reduced, virtually, to extras.

Technically, the film stands out for the excellent special effects and the sense of realism and authenticity of all those explosions, especially when the camera shows us an overview of the combat. It is likely that these scenes were made on location instead of using the green screen. If not, the CGI used was the best available. The cinematography is also very good and offers us some impressive scenes and sequences. But, in the final, there is so much impressive action that, from some point, it no longer impresses us, being this film a victim of its own recipe for permanent noisy and histrionic action. Good sets and costumes complete the overview of a war movie loaded with action but perfectly forgettable.… Expand

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