Windtalkers

Starring Nicolas Cage, Adam Beach, Christian Slater, Peter Stormare, Noah Emmerich and Mark Ruffalo. Rated MA

In war, battlefield communication is vital to military success. In ancient times, communications relied on the speed of a man and a good steed. Various improvements were developed down the centuries until eventually, radio was invented.

Radio broadcast communications, while offering ease of comms over varying distances and with varying degrees of reliability, were, and still are, problematic in that, by their very nature, anyone tuned to the right frequency can hear ever word. Next evolution was encryption. Add a clever code to scramble the message and Bob's your uncle.

Except it doesn't take a clever enemy too long to crack even the cleverest code, by fair means or foul. Hence, more and more elaborate and intricate codes have been developed -- and cracked -- in the course of war and peace.

During World War 2 the Yanks came up with a clever counter countermeasure. Using an ancient, homegrown resource they made up a fairly crude and simple code and then translated it into the native tongue of the Navajo Nation. Thus, no matter how clever they were, the Japs would have to be real lucky to break that code. No use torturing a Yankie POW because he can't speak the language. No use torturing just any American Indian, because, unless he actually knows the code, the language alone isn't enough - assuming he's a Navajo in the first place.

Therefore, to break this highly prized code, the enemy would have to catch themselves a live windtalker. Hense, the windtalkers were a highly protected species.

But, from the Yankie view point, there was no use keeping them at home where they couldn't be shot -- windtalkers needed to be where the code was needed -- that is, at the sharp end. So, to protect the code, the windtalkers needed protection -- their own personal bodyguards.

That's where Sgt Joe Enders (Cage) comes in. The tormented, battle hardened US Marine with something to prove and a chip evenly balanced on both shoulders, assigned to protect the code stored deep in the young head of Pte Ben Yahzee (Beach).

Deployed with the main assault on Saipan Island at the latter end of WW2, the Marines and their code talkers faced a huge, well-dug-in enemy determined to defend the outer vestiges of their own motherland.

Windtalkers is a blockbuster movie from acclaimed director John Woo, the man who brought us Face Off and Mission Impossible II but, I think it's fair to say, falls a long way short of living up to its predecessors in this post-Pte-Ryan-war-movie era.

On the one hand, it seemed as though Windtalkers was trying hard to fit in the ultra-realistic war-movie genre, but let itself down badly in key areas of realism. On the other hand, realism was so suspended that it seemed the film was trying to be a typical Hollywood action movie.

Throughout the movie, it was hard to tell the source of one explosion from another. Hand grenades were delivering as much blast and effect as 500 pound bombs dropped from on high. Then there was the bottomless Hollywood magazine, where a single good guy could mow down a whole section of Nips with a ceaseless spray of magically lethal 9mm-pistol rounds.

The actual windtalker code itself was poorly utilised as well. We all know why code is so valuable in a military campaign. I think its probably fair to assume that we also know that to use code willy nilly in the heat of battle is a bit pointless. When calling in indirect fire, for example, onto a target like an enemy indirect-fire position, encoding the enemy's coordinates is probably a bit superfluous. I think the enemy knows where he is already and, with all hell about to rain down on top of him, he's not going to have time to worry about folding up his hootchy.

In summary, Windtalkers was trying to be a true-to-life war film in the vein of Saving Pte Ryan or Black Hawk Dawn while at the same time trying too hard to suspend realism in favour of the action hero genre, and quite frankly, failing in both departments.
2 Shamrocks