Salocin

Windtalkers

John Woo forays into US military history with a film about the capture of the island of Saipan, and the role played by the Navajo code in the co-ordination of army, naval and military units during combat.

Sgts. Joe Enders and Ox Henderson, played by Nicholas Cage and Christian Slater are assigned to follow "CodeTalkers", Navajo indians who have been taught a code based on their own language that allows the US forces to communicate in ways indecipherable to the enemy. Their assignment is to protect the Code at all costs, if the enemy learns how to decipher the code, then a critical advantage will have been lost.

Given the implications of these instructions, and for other reasons besides, Sgt. Enders seeks to minimise the friendship and camaraderie that develops between him and his assigned CodeTalker, all the while seeking to get over the devastating loss of his entire previous unit; something which he feels he must bear some responsibility for.

The development of the relationships between the characters are quite well drawn - they are the meat of the film and are thankfully not too rushed or crude. The plot itself, however, leaves very little room for surprise, and events conspire to develop a story that suffers from being far too predictable. It is fairly clear from early on who will live and who will die, who will be transformed by war and who will ultimately be redeemed. As these obvious plot developments approach, and we see them coming, there is that all-too-familiar desire to fast-forward past the next bit to see if the scriptwriters managed to find something original to do immediately after the predictable material.

As a story of the heroism of the CodeTalkers, it fails - but only because it succeeds in painting a sufficiently personal picture of Private Ben Yahzee (played by Adam Beach) that it becomes hard to see him as a representative of all the CodeTalkers in the army.

Graphically violent, and with the same levels of death as the Normandy Landing in Saving Private Ryan, this movie fails to live up to the promise implied by the casting of Nick Cage, largely because the writers failed to move away from the tired clichés of war, and instead gave us things we have all seen before. The introduction of the CodeTalkers into the story is insufficient a variation to see this as anything more than another addition to the "War Movies" shelf, and an average one at that. Fine for a quiet night, but don't expect groundbreaking stuff here.