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Movies / On DVD / Windtalkers
Windtalkers

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Windtalkers (2002)

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Reviews Counted:165

Fresh:54

Rotten:111

Average Rating:5.1/10

Consensus: The action sequences are expertly staged. Windtalkers, however, sinks under too many clichés and only superficially touches upon the story of the code talkers.

Runtime: 2 hrs 34 mins

Genre: Dramas

Synopsis: WINDTALKERS begins quietly--with widescreen aerial shots of clouds that gradually clear to reveal the beautiful mesas of Monument Valley. A bus collects Navajo volunteers Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach)... WINDTALKERS begins quietly--with widescreen aerial shots of clouds that gradually clear to reveal the beautiful mesas of Monument Valley. A bus collects Navajo volunteers Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach) and Charlie Whitehorse (Roger Willie). It's 1943, and the U.S. has developed an indecipherable secret military code based on the Navajo language. Yahzee and Whitehorse are to be trained as code talkers. Then John Woo's Pacific war film erupts into violence, with a savage battle that has one survivor, Joe Enders (Nicolas Cage). Badly wounded and feeling guilty at the loss of his companions, Joe recuperates in Hawaii where he is helped by a sympathetic nurse (Frances O'Connor). Joe disguises his hearing loss and he is promoted as Yahzee's battlefield bodyguard. Ordered to "protect the code at all times," Joe must prevent Yahzee from being captured. At first, Yahzee and Whitehorse, whose bodyguard is Ox Henderson (Christian Slater), are subjected to prejudice--particularly from Rogers (Noah Emmerich). But when the unit is shipped to Saipan, the Marines begin to appreciate the code talkers. Director Woo has created a powerful drama. The visceral battle sequences are strikingly filmed and there is fine acting from Cage, Beach, Willie, Slater, Emmerich, and Frances O'Connor, who portrays the poignancy of love in uncertain times. [More]

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Adam Beach, Christian Slater, Peter Stormare

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Adam Beach, Christian Slater, Peter Stormare, Noah Emmerich, Mark Ruffalo, Brian Van Holt, Roger Willie, Frances O'Connor

Director: John Woo

Director: John Woo
Screenwriter: John Rice, Joe Batteer
Producer: John Woo, Terence Chang, Tracie Graham, Alison Rosenzweig
Composer: James Horner
Studio: MGM/UA

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Reviews for Windtalkers

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1 - 20 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
Text View | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 >> >|
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Replete with Cage's finest angsty acting and John Woo's requisite concerns of friendship and rivalry in the face of violence.

Full Review Source: Channel 4 Film | comment Comment
09/19/08
Daniel Etherington
Daniel Etherington
Channel 4 Film
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

The screenwriters struggle to integrate the coded transmissions with the action, and the flamboyant set piece battles feel like so much empty rhetoric.

Full Review Source: Time Out | comment Comment
01/26/06
Time Out
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

A vast repository of hoary, honour-code clichés.

Full Review Source: Daily Telegraph | comment Comment
10/19/03
Tim Robey
Tim Robey
Daily Telegraph
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

What should be a moving story with spectacular battle scenes by one of the world's greatest action directors is a huge let-down.

Full Review Source: Empire Magazine | comment Comment
02/02/03
Olly Richards
Olly Richards
Empire Magazine
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

It comfortably emerges as the best of the recent war flicks.

Full Review Source: ViewLondon | comment Comment
10/30/02
Matthew Turner
Matthew Turner
ViewLondon

A merely competent action war pic, boasting neither Woo's trademark balletic violent set-pieces nor any convincing insight into the tensions between the native Americans and their Anglo-Saxon commanders in the Marine Corps.

Full Review Source: Guardian [UK] | comment Comment
10/02/02
Peter Bradshaw
Peter Bradshaw
Guardian [UK]
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

If Windtalkers is overlong and hopelessly overwrought, it is also thrilling and beautiful.

Full Review Source: Sight and Sound | comment Comment
09/03/02
Andrew O'Hehir
Andrew O'Hehir
Sight and Sound

In the wake of Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down and We Were Soldiers, you are likely to be as heartily sick of mayhem as Cage's war-weary marine.

Full Review Source: BBC | comment Comment
08/20/02
Neil Smith
Neil Smith
BBC
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Woo simply seems lost in all the emotional claptrap, war movie cliches, cornball dialog and mumbo jumbo about bravery and patriotism.

Full Review Source: Shadows on the Wall | comment Comment
06/10/02
Rich Cline
Rich Cline
Shadows on the Wall

The energy and conviction of the action sequences don't quite compensate for Windtalkers' emotional cliches and historical heedlessness.

Full Review Source: TIME Magazine | comment Comment
09/19/08
Richard Schickel
Richard Schickel
TIME Magazine
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

A powerful premise turned into a stubbornly flat, derivative war movie.

Full Review Source: Variety | comment Comment
09/19/08
Robert Koehler
Robert Koehler
Variety
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

With Windtalkers, the glaring refutations of time, space and reality impress upon viewers the simple fact that Woo is at his best when he isn't attempting anything more significant than the most emptily satisfying explosion you're likely to enjoy - a scat

Full Review Source: IGN Movies | comment Comment
07/02/08
Todd Gilchrist
Todd Gilchrist
IGN Movies

What we get is a surprisingly entertaining film, corny as it is at times, that could have suited John Wayne. [Published 5-13-02]

Full Review Source: Kansas City Kansan | comment Comment
12/19/05
Steve Crum
Steve Crum
Kansas City Kansan

This is the kind of film where you think you can predict everything that’s going to happen upon the first shot and you spend the rest of the film praying that you’re wrong. But it’s fun getting there.

Full Review Source: Film Threat | comment Comment
12/06/05
David Grove
David Grove
Film Threat

I didn't expect a comedy.

Full Review Source: tonymedley.com | comment Comment
10/07/04
Tony Medley
Tony Medley
tonymedley.com

Too celebratory of Woo's good guy-versus-bad guy, buddy-buddy ethos of action movies to rise above the limitations of the genre, and too obsessed with its own seriousness to be a truly 'serious' film.

Full Review Source: FilmStew.com | comment Comment
02/01/04
Todd Gilchrist
Todd Gilchrist
FilmStew.com

You’d probably be better off reading Catch 22 – even if it is for the fifth time . . .

Full Review Source: Movie Gurus | comment Comment
09/24/03
James O'Ehley
James O'Ehley
Movie Gurus

A premissa é interessante, mas o terceiro ato do filme, quando Cage e Beach se tornam indestrutíveis, estraga o filme.

comment Comment
07/25/03
Pablo Villaca
Pablo Villaca
Cinema em Cena

It’s tough to get worked up after watching superior films like Black Hawk Down and We Were Soldiers.”

Full Review Source: Reno Gazette-Journal | comment Comment
06/13/03
Forrest Hartman
Forrest Hartman
Reno Gazette-Journal

Sure, he directs the heck out of gun battles and hand-to-hand combat, paying loving attention to each grunt, spurt and grimace, but there is something unseemly about the agony of war serving as fodder for yet another of Woo's sensational spectacles.

Full Review Source: Palo Alto Weekly | comment Comment
05/20/03
Jim Shelby
Jim Shelby
Palo Alto Weekly
 
 
1 - 20 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
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Latest News for Windtalkers

September 15, 2005: Critical Consensus: Critics Thank "Heaven," But Don't Praise The "Lord"
This week at the movies brings us a supernatural romance ("Just Like Heaven"), a jaded arms dealer ("Lord of War") and two experiments in terror... More...

July 07, 2005: Eastwood Drafts Three Soldiers for "Flag" Duty
Legendary filmmaker Clint Eastwood ("The Outlaw Josey Wales," "Million Dollar Baby") has just started casting his next project, which is a WWII drama... More...

August 20, 2001: Painstakingly choreographed battle scenes exposed actors and cameramen to as many as 280 bombs, and at least one close call. Opens in new window
More...

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