"Windtalkers"

John Woo's ultraviolent paean to the Navajo "code talkers" who fought with the Marines in World War II takes his Hollywood dream to new heights.

By Stephanie Zacharek

June 14, 2002 | Fans of John Woo's Hong Kong movies have often had a hard time reconciling them with the work he's done in America. Compared with sometimes overly polished entertainments like "Face/Off" (1997) or "Mission: Impossible 2" (2000), Woo's bloodier, more passionate Hong Kong pictures seem to have come not just from another country but another world. You could tell from pictures like the exhilarating "Hard Boiled" (1992) and the devastatingly operatic "Bullet in the Head" (1990) that Woo was deeply in love with the tradition of the Hollywood gangster picture, so deeply in love that he was working in a dream version of the old Hollywood -- in other words, not a long-gone time and place, but one that never existed at all.

Woo's arrival in the real Hollywood, some 10 years ago, seemed to drive an immovable wedge between his old dream Hollywood and the real McCoy. His American pictures have always showcased a certain level of craftsmanship and they always have energy. But the earthy dreaminess of those older Hong Kong movies -- that quality of not belonging to any specific time or place -- seems to have fallen away forever.

Or, at least, almost. "Windtalkers" is a true mainstream Hollywood movie in just about every sense; it doesn't mark a return to innocence for Woo, and we shouldn't expect it to. (As different as the U.S. movie industry is from that of the old Hong Kong, it's likely that Woo's "new" style of filmmaking is almost as much a product of his age and experience as it is of the system under which he works.) But "Windtalkers" is the best of Woo's American movies, and the one with the sturdiest and most direct links to his earlier pictures.

In "Windtalkers," which was inspired by the real-life experiences of Navajo men who were recruited as Marines during World War II and trained to use a secret military code based on their native language, Woo finds a deep and welcoming repository for his favorite themes: the importance of honor among men, even when preserving it means committing unspeakable acts; the incalculable value of true friendship, which should also be preserved at all costs; and the notion that the most moral decisions are not necessarily the most obvious ones, and they're never the easiest.

"Windtalkers" has plenty of flaws. It doesn't have a pleasing structure; the story shambles somewhat aimlessly from scene to scene. And there are long stretches where the movie's brutality is so relentless that it numbs us to the very experiences to which Woo is trying to sensitize us: We need to shut a bit of ourselves off to get through it, which means we're not as fully attentive to the violence as we should be.

Even so, "Windtalkers" is shapelessly gratifying, the kind of movie that invites you to pick apart its faults even as you have to admit that somehow it hit you where you live. Nicolas Cage plays Marine Sgt. Joe Enders, who's known as a good soldier because he always follows orders, even though doing so resulted in the death of his entire squad during one bloody South Pacific battle. (Most of the movie's action takes place during a later battle, the 1944 clash between U.S. and Japanese forces on the island of Saipan.) Enders survives, recovers and eagerly signs up for a new assignment: He's entrusted with guarding a Navajo "code talker" named Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach) who is trained to transmit messages in the new Navajo-based code.

Similarly, one of Enders' fellow officers, Ox Henderson (Christian Slater), has been assigned to guard Yahzee's pal, Charles Whitehorse (Roger Willie, in a warm but never ingratiating performance), another code talker. The directive is to "protect the code at all costs." The subtext -- one that Woo, wisely, doesn't spell out until late in the movie -- is that protecting the code is not necessarily the same thing as protecting the lives of the men who know it.

In real life, in 1942, 29 Navajo Marines developed a secret code that the Japanese would never crack (and they cracked many); the work of those original code talkers, plus that of the some 300 Navajo Marines who were trained to use the code, has been cited as pivotal in the United States' eventual victory over Japan. During the battle of Iwo Jima alone, Marines using the code transmitted some 800 error-free messages within 48 hours.

You can see why the bare bones of that scenario would appeal to Woo. There are only a few scenes in which we actually see Yahzee and Whitehorse transmitting messages in the heat of battle, and they're thrilling precisely because Woo doesn't load up on them. He's much more interested in the relationships between the men -- and, of course, the action.

"Windtalkers" is generously laden with Woo's characteristic, beautifully choreographed fight sequences; they're also very bloody. You can get away with a lot more violence when you've got the built-in excuse that you're convincing the audience of the horrors of war, but there are times when Woo might have taken a breather. His action sequences are so clear and bright that they would have more impact with fewer throat-slittings and bloodied, twitching stumps.

Next page: Those corny old-Hollywood touches that Woo can pull off -- and no other director would even try