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Full of hot air >> Windtalkers is a cliché-ridden, contradictory mess by MATTHEW HAYS
It’s pretty tiring stuff, and Windtalkers, helmed by none other than John Woo, does little to breathe new life into the affair. This, despite a based-on-true-story label, Nicolas Cage in the lead, and an authentic minority-status actor (Canada’s Adam Beach, who’s excellent here) trying to carry the film. As it turns out, Navajo native people played a crucial role during WWII. Their ability to speak in a language entirely indeterminable by the enemy meant they could pass messages over the radio waves that would go undetected by the Japanese forces. Windtalkers wears this valiant story with pride, but is such a shallow movie that it’s difficult to really take seriously, despite that well-meaning, liberal message. There are plenty of well-trodden paths the characters go down. Like Cage himself, who has his reservations about working with “Injuns”—as Tony Curtis did in The Defiant Ones, he’ll have to learn to get over his prejudices in time. Then there’s the Bigoted Soldier, who is saved by a Navajo and realizes they’re all in it together. And, perhaps most embarrassingly, one Navajo plays a native-sounding flute in a duet with the Good Liberal Soldier (played by Christian Slater, who accompanies on harmonica). We can all learn to get along! In essence, this is Saving Private Ryan Goes Native. And as such, it does raise questions about how far a non-ironic war movie can go in asking for peace and understanding while also glorifying the act of blowing the mysterious enemy to kingdom come. It’s a weird, paradoxical thing, especially here, coming from an Asian director. As for the film’s theme of tolerance, really, studio films this shallow shouldn’t try to hide behind them. It doesn’t work. Suffice it to say, Windtalkers has about as much to do with illuminating native identity as the last Village People concert I caught did. : Windtalkers opens Friday, June 14 |
From its
opening moments, Windtalkers, the latest WWII-as-seen-through-the-prism-of-Vietnam
war movie, reeks of every cliché in the genre. There are bullets
spitting through skin. There are exploding blood packs, guts hanging
out of soldiers and, that good old stylistic standby, the shift into
slo-mo.