Directed without the expected flair or imagination by Hong Kong master John Woo, Windtalkers airs just about every cliche in the war movie compendium across its indulgent two-hour-and-fifteen-minute length.
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06/14/02
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Windtalkers (2002)
33
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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.
Theatrical Release:Jun 14, 2002 Wide
Box Office: $40,531,308
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)... [More]
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Adam Beach, Christian Slater, Peter Stormare
Director: John Woo
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Reviews for Windtalkers
Top CriticThe only time Windtalkers doesn't go by the book is when Woo feels compelled to remind in-the-know moviegoers that he's John Woo: birds artfully flapping their wings, grass swaying, blood spurting, Joe staring soulfully into his personal abyss.
06/14/02
Top CriticThe major problem with Windtalkers is that the bulk of the movie centers on the wrong character.
06/14/02
I wish Windtalkers had had more faith in the dramatic potential of this true story. This would have been better than the fiction it has concocted, and there still could have been room for the war scenes.
06/14/02
Top CriticWhat ultimately makes Windtalkers a disappointment is the superficial way it deals with its story.
06/14/02
It's such an obvious, hack gesture, you can hardly believe Woo is responsible.
06/14/02
A man leaving the screening said the film was better than Saving Private Ryan. He may have meant the Internet short Saving Ryan's Privates. But Windtalkers doesn't beat that one, either.
06/14/02
Woo wanted the film to be realistic, and it is. The violence is unrelenting, the uniforms are dirty and mismatched, the weapons are shiny from use, the soldiers are exhausted, sick, sad.
06/14/02
From the first round of gunfire that shocks the audience out of their seats (literally), the war wages on...this is a powerful movie about men who discover what it means to be comrades in arms.
06/14/02
Windtalkers takes a great, original story about an unrecognized group of true American heroes and wraps it with layer upon layer of war cliches until it suffocates.
06/14/02
With its dogged Hollywood naturalism and the inexorable passage of its characters toward sainthood, Windtalkers is nothing but a sticky-sweet soap.
06/14/02
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06/14/02
Throwing in everything except someone pulling the pin from a grenade with his teeth, Windtalkers seems to have ransacked every old World War II movie for overly familiar material.
06/14/02
Top CriticBy my count, there are four separate films unspooling here. Individually, given half a chance, any one of them might have been good; but collectively, squeezed together and underdeveloped, they don't really add up.
06/14/02
Despite the promise of a Native American history lesson, Cage hogs most of the film, overshadowed only by the spectacle of it all and an annoying score.
06/14/02
An old-fashioned war movie that mires in mediocrity.
06/14/02
Top CriticThough it might be argued that Nicolas Cage roaring and contorting in slow motion makes for good action cinema, it's hardly the basis for a thoughtful interrogation of how war works...
06/14/02
We can only view Windtalkers with the same shaken detachment that characterizes Mr. Cage's Joe Enders, wishing that the codetalkers' real story, a little known and fascinating chunk of American history, had been given its true dramatic import.
06/14/02
Top CriticA depressing example of how even the most promising subjects -- in this case, World War II Navajo code talkers -- can get turned into sentimental mush by Hollywood.
06/14/02
Top CriticWindtalkers is capably made and certainly impresses by carrying its length, but it doesn't expand 60 years of World War II screen literature by very much.
06/14/02
Top CriticLatest 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. 
More...
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