My take: Windtalkers
I'm just going to cut right to it - this is one of the worst WWII movies I've ever seen. Nicholas Cage is a hack as any sort of "action" star, much less a decorated and troubled soldier - however it's not like he's given anything to really work with here. John Woo needs to stick to slick cityscapes - the historical battlefield is no place for him.
The background story is actually worth telling. During the Pacific campaign, the Marines enlisted Navajo Indians for the specific purpose of sending coded messages back and forth to coordinate attacks.
That's where the interestingness ends. Woo tries to add some conflict by way of the mission being to protect the code, not specifically the man - but we all know how that ends up before anything really occurs. The telegraphing and foreshadowing in this movie are about as light handed as King Kong. The scenes between battles are snooze-worthy, supposedly serving as bonding between code-talker and protector, but they turn out more like an entry in to the over-actors hall of fame.
Speaking of the battle sequences, they have more in common with a video game than real combat. Cage rages around the battlefield, thrusting his Tommy Gun and spraying bullets towards any enemy at any range and sending them down. He uses one hand, fires from the hip, and just about everywhere else except his shoulder. It just looks hokey. Don't get me started on just how many bullets he has for his handgun - I think he only ran empty when it was necessary to move a plot point along.
This is just an absolute dud that I contemplated turning off several times and still wonder why I didn't. 2/10
The background story is actually worth telling. During the Pacific campaign, the Marines enlisted Navajo Indians for the specific purpose of sending coded messages back and forth to coordinate attacks.
That's where the interestingness ends. Woo tries to add some conflict by way of the mission being to protect the code, not specifically the man - but we all know how that ends up before anything really occurs. The telegraphing and foreshadowing in this movie are about as light handed as King Kong. The scenes between battles are snooze-worthy, supposedly serving as bonding between code-talker and protector, but they turn out more like an entry in to the over-actors hall of fame.
Speaking of the battle sequences, they have more in common with a video game than real combat. Cage rages around the battlefield, thrusting his Tommy Gun and spraying bullets towards any enemy at any range and sending them down. He uses one hand, fires from the hip, and just about everywhere else except his shoulder. It just looks hokey. Don't get me started on just how many bullets he has for his handgun - I think he only ran empty when it was necessary to move a plot point along.
This is just an absolute dud that I contemplated turning off several times and still wonder why I didn't. 2/10
posted by misawa at 9:28 PM
2 Comments:
I thought the same thing when I saw this movie. What a waste of time.
Ditto. I was severely disappointed. The music doesn't fit, Nic Cage is too old, Christian Slater plays Christian Slater, and like you wrote and I wrote in my review when it came out, "it descends into action-film-pap, where one guy (usually Cage) fends off 100 enemies who suddenly forget how to shoot straight."
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