WINDTALKERS (John Woo, 2002)

Reviewed: June 21, 2002

John Woo has managed to succeed where most other directors have failed. He has managed to create a film that is not only completely ill-conceived from first frame to last, devoid of any merit, mind-numbingly boring and totally wastes a very talented cast, but one that is also offensive. And I don't just mean offensive to the tastes of a smart filmgoer. I also mean offensive to the tastes of what I consider to be a goodhearted human being.

Offensive because of its overwrought, endless, pointless carnage (to anyone who's thinking 'war is pointless brother, that is the point man'-- shut the fuck up, that doesn't cut it anymore, we have to do better). Offensive because there is not even a shred of credible story or credible character development, thus absolutely no reason for all the carnage. Woo clearly wanted an excuse to extend his already disgustingly overrated action choreography skills onto the battlefield. But he couldn't just show a two hour, fourteen minute combat scene (well actually he could have if he had managed to finagle the reins of Black Hawk Down from Ridley Scott) because (A) no studio would give him the cash and (B) the audience would instantly be onto his self-important motives.

No, he needed an excuse. So he attached himself to a couple of hack screenwriters who write lines so abysmal you can't believe anyone over the age of seven can say them with a straight face. God, do I pity the actors in this film. Mark Ruffalo is one of the best actors currently in cinema. He gave the best performance of 2000 in Kenneth Lonergan's You Can Count On Me. To see him struggling with the garbage he has to spout in this travesty, hurt me. It really did. Made me sad that such an enormously talented actor had to endure John Woo's wrath.

I hope you're sitting down, because you are not gonna believe what I'm about to write. Ready?

War is brutal.
Yep.
According to two hours and fourteen minutes of Windtalkers, war is a brutal motherfucking enterprise, one of the most horrifically violent human endeavors possible.
Can you believe it?
Did you know people die in war? Innocent people... people of all different ethnic backgrounds... they die. For no reason! Can you believe it?
People lose heads. People lose limbs.
Yep. It's true.

Hold on... this just in... apparently... wait, yes, I've confirmed... everyone in their right fucking mind already knew that! We knew that from A) television B) newspapers C) history books D) our parents E) school and F) the endless war films that have preceded Windtalkers. We knew that because of Apocalypse Now. And Platoon. And Full Metal Jacket. And Casualties of War. And Saving Private Ryan. And The Thin Red Line. And Black Hawk Down.

But wait. John Woo thought we think war is a sunny, happy face enterprise. He thought it was his duty to enlighten us fools. So he decided to hang on his flimsy excuse for a story (about a Navajo Indian, the code created out of his native language and the military officer assigned to protect him) two hours of blood and guts. Countless men (mostly the Japanese ironically) being mowed down, gunfire, bombs, explosions, stabbing, etc. etc. etc. Ceaseless.

But get this, cause here's where things get even more offensive. Unable to decide on a consistent tone and insisting on frequently putting his annoying directorial stamp on shots, Woo combines gritty realism with his standard slow motion absurdity.

Now, I did not fight in WW II. However, I am willing to bet hard dollars that no one ever died in a carefully choreographed, 48 frames per second, arms flaying endlessly in midair fashion. I am not saying a director like Kubrick or Coppola cannot show the horror of war by showing it surreally. But Woo's images just come off as flat out juvenile glorification. Critics continually write of Woo's M.O. as "the beauty of violence." Yeah, well war is never beautiful. Never ever ever ever. The odd thing is that Woo does seem to know this 80% of the time. And he restrains himself accordingly to merely Level 1 Offensive Images. But the other 20% it's time to break out the Mexican standoffs and the sumptuous ballet pretension and la de da and look at what a great director I am and up the ante to Level 2 Supremely Offensive Images.

Frankly, Woo's use of slow motion is terrible and I'm sick to death of seeing it praised. In Windtalkers, it's not just terrible on the battlefield. There are hilarious, laugh out loud shots of Nicholas Cage training in slow motion. And any time Woo's script fails him (read: all the time) he decides he must break out the "heighten the emotion" machine, aka the audience is too dumb to appreciate how dramatic this is if it isn't in slow motion.

Windtalkers and its violence are so fucking offensive cause we've seen it all before and we've seen it all done infinitely better before. Don't make a fucking movie if you can't offer the audience anything new, and especially don't make a fucking war movie if the only thing you're gonna offer the audience is a million corpses. How does that enrich our lives? What's the point? There is none to Windtalkers. Absolutely none. God, it makes me sick even rehashing the scenes in my brain.

Every cliché you can think of is here, and some don't even make any sense. The great Frances O'Connor (of A.I. fame) plays a nurse with two lame scenes with Cage and suddenly she has become the obligatory, but nonexistent love interest so her entire role is limited to writing Cage letters and reading them in voice-over. I mean it's just embarrassing. There's the standard cultural conflict. There's the bigot. There's the "What are you gonna do when the war's over?" scene. There's the "Give this to my wife" "No, don't even fucking talk like that man! We're gonna get outta here" scene. There's "our protagonist dying in a ridiculously overdone, melodramatic fashion and everyone mourns for him" scene.

Perhaps most baffling about the badness of Windtalker's script is how little it details the Navajo codetalkers, their exploits and their useful talents. You'd think the screenwriters would have recognized the only remotely interesting thing they had going for them and explored it, but no sir, that'd have been way too difficult. That would have like, required actual research, man!

The battle scenes in Windtalkers unfold in the midst of beautiful landscapes. All I could think of during them after a bit was (they grow so so so fucking repetitious mind you): 'I can't believe this lush green treasure is being polluted and abused and exploded and smoke-filled by Woo and his movie crew. What a waste of God's glory. Spoiling pure nature so the audience can be treated to Cage at his overacting worst.'

I said John Woo's overrated and I'll prove it. Let's take a look at his credits. Hard Target's a piece of shit. Broken Arrow's a piece of dung. Mission Impossible II is positively awful. Woop de doo dah he made the excellent Face/Off and some allegedly good films overseas a decade ago (admittedly none of which I've seen besides The Killer, which I wasn't the least bit impressed by). I guess that means we should forgive every bad film he continues to make for the rest of his career, right?

No, wrong. I hate Windtalkers with every fiber of my being. It's a heinous piece of torture, and no one deserves to have it inflicted upon them.

PS: James Horner's score is obnoxiously overbearing.

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