Windtalkers
Originally Written: June 2002
There are only a few action directors in modern American cinema I can seem to trust to entertain me. Tony Scott is one, thanks to “Enemy of the State,” “True Romance,” and “Crimson Tide.” So is Richard Donner, the criminally underrated craftsman behind the four “Lethal Weapon” films, two more films with Mel Gibson- “Maverick” and “Conspiracy Theory,” and “Superman: The Movie.” James Cameron has to be on there thanks to “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” and “True Lies,” while Ridley Scott- though not a pure action director- is another (see “Black Hawk Down” and “Gladiator” if you don’t believe me). A few others I can trust most of the time are Andrew Davis (“The Fugitive,” “Collateral Damage”) and John McTiernan (“Die Hard,” “Predator”), though these two can be off on some days (see “Chain Reaction” for Davis and the incoherent “Die Hard With a Vengance” for McTiernan). As for Michael Bay and Simon West, I’ll continue going to their movies, hoping for the best (I was entertained very much during Bay’s “The Rock” and West’s “Con Air” and “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider”), but bracing for the worst (“Armageddon” and “Pearl Harbor” for Bay, “The General’s Daughter” for West).
Which leads me to the Hong Kong master John Woo. For me, that name instills in me a confidence few filmmakers can match (Spielberg, Soderbergh, Alex Proyas, and Ron Howard are on the short list among contemporary directors). From the first film I saw of Woo’s- 1996’s fun John Travolta-Christian Slater actioner “Broken Arrow” (B+)- I was hooked to the filmmaker’s sly, stylized violence, with it’s expertly-choreographed death, explosive twin gunplay, gun-to-the-head dramatics, and slow motion poetry. That film- not too bright admittedly- has been a fixture on my favorite films of all-time since I saw it, and contains the themes of friendship and loyalty that were not to be found in his American debut- the studio sanitized 1993 Jean-Claude Van Damme thriller “Hard Target” (B), but were always prominant in his Hong Kong thrillers. As I awaited the release of what would turn out to be Woo’s best American film- 1997’s bold, brilliant “Face/Off,” with Travolta and Nicolas Cage turning in riveting work as a cop and robber who switch bodies and lives- I caught up with not just “Hard Target” (which I had yet to see at the time), but also Woo’s most popular Hong Kong films, his 1986 breakthrough with star Chow Yun-Fat, “A Better Tomorrow”; his 1989 masterpiece “The Killer” (also starring Chow), and his 1992 Hong Kong swan song, the extraordinary “Hard-Boiled,” with Chow and Tony Leung shooting it out with an arms dealer in a hospital in an astonishing climax that puts American action cinema to shame. What a way to leave your home country, eh?
Post “Face/Off” though, Woo’s films are a bit uneven, closer to his pre-“Face/Off” work than his Hong Kong classics. He directed two made-for-TV actioners for Canadian television that are competent at best- a remake of his own 1991 film “Once a Thief” (A-) that pales to the original, and a Dolph Lundgren flick called “Blackjack” which is more interesting than “Hard Target,” but not quite Woorific the way fans would like- and the Tom Cruise sequel “Mission: Impossible 2” (B+), which dismayed fans further by turning his much-touted visual finesse into B-rate Hollywood cliche while the movie ran too long on a bare-bones plot barely worth the time. Still, I found “M:i-2” enjoyable the same way I did “Broken Arrow”- as mindless escapism. Plus, the DVD is the richest of Woo’s American films in terms of bells-and-whistles including a commentary by Woo that I found quite entertaining); we can only hope they revisit “Face/Off” for the same treatment. After three such creatively-insignificant outings, and only one American film even coming close to the feelings his Hong Kong films inspired (“Face/Off”), it’s not really shocking Woo started to be called things like a hack or one-trick pony.
So does his latest- the WWII actioner “Windtalkers”- buck this trend?
In plot and dialogue, no. The dialogue’s as corny as any old-fashioned WWII film, and the plot doesn’t get much into the specifics of the actual premise the story is inspired by (how Navajo Indians and they’re language was used as an unbreakable code- and it was never broken against the Japanese in the war in the Pacific). These “code talkers” are just now getting their due respect and recognition by Washington. “Windtalkers” looks to be a tribute to these heroes onscreen.
On that level, it falls a bit short. But thanks to the bold artistry of Woo, and moving performances by the stars, “Windtalkers” achieves a poetry and power all it’s own that distiguishes it not just from the recent forays into onscreen warfare (“Black Hawk Down,” “We Were Soldiers,” “Saving Private Ryan”), but from it’s WWII-era bretheran as well. This struck me as the sort of lyrical, eloquent army tour de force Terrance Malick tried to achieve in his overpraised “The Thin Red Line” (based on James Jones’ book about Guadalcanal), just without the mindnumbingly pretentious voiceover of Malick’s film. The rich cinematography by Jeffrey Kimball (“Wild Things,” “M:i-2”) is a visual feast to behold, especially during the opening and closing scenes, filmed in Monument Valley, where Woo shot “Broken Arrow” and another John- Ford- filmed his most legendary Westerns like “Stagecoach” and “The Searchers.” It’s the year’s most striking visual achievement thus far.
But it’s not just visually where the film is set apart. The tone of “Windtalkers” is completely different from the visceral front-line action of “Black Hawk Down” and “Saving Private Ryan.” While there are moments of chaotic “Saving Private Ryan”-esque bloodletting, Woo films most of the action- revolving around the Battle of Saipan- in his much-imitated style of expertly-choreographed, slow motion blood ballet, which has been not unreasonably likened to that of an old Hollywood musical. It may feel a bit video gamey and trivializing at times, but Woo’s style in pictures like “The Killer” and “Hard-Boiled” always was. Nonetheless, there’s always been something oddly haunting about
Woo’s action scenes, and in “Windtalkers” (with a surprisingly otherworldly score by James Horner that also manages to be exciting during the battle scenes), that’s rarely been more evident.
Like every great director, characters and their relationships are important to Woo. “Windtalkers” is a sterling example. Nicolas Cage stars as Joe Enders, a Marine whom is physically and emotionally scarred after a stand on some rather unimportant marsh land that left his entire company slaughtered (this stand brings the film to a startling opening). He wants to go back out though, and with the help of a nurse at the hospital he’s at (a haunting, touching Frances O’Connor from “A.I.”). If you’re worried about a sappy, “Pearl Harbor”-esque love story, worry not; Woo keeps any romance at a distance through Enders’ numbed feelings after the tragedy at the swamp that started the film, though the nurse- Rita- longs to get through to him. He is given an assignment- to “babysit”- along with fellow Marine Ox (Christian Slater; terrific)- two of the Navajo codetalkers that are going to be on the frontline of the Battle of Saipan. The codetalkers are Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach from 1998’s “Smoke Signals”) and Charlie Whithorse (Roger Willie). There’s a catch though- if the codetalkers are in danger of being captured by the Japanese, they have a responsibility to “protect the code.” Not the codetalker, the code. Was this order ever given? Not in real life. It’s a complication devised by writers John Rice and Joe Batteer to raise the moral question of the mission for Joe and Ox. Woo plays it for both tension and rich character studies, as Joe and Ox take different approaches towards their charges. Whereas Ox starts by trying to bond with Charlie (they have commonground in that they both enjoy playing music- Ox a harmonica and Charlie a Native instrument- that really had an impact on me personally), and they do, Joe distances himself from Ben, focusing more on the possible consequences of the mission than forging what is obviously a much-needed friendship for himself. Beach and Willie are superb in breakthrough roles; they bring a sense of humanity and honor to the characters that make them easy to root for. But Cage is the standout, in one of his very best performances. His Enders has more in common with his Oscar-winning role of an alcoholic in “Leaving Las Vegas” than with the psycho of Woo’s “Face/Off” and hero in “The Rock,” but leave it to Cage to inject some much-welcome wry humor into such a sorrowful role, and to do it so well. Very few actors could manage the task.
One of the things I’ve been so fascinated about regarding war films of the past few years (and past 25 years in general) is how original and fresh each vision- by the finest filmmakers alive- feels compared to another ones about the same war. Among Vietnam films, neither Coppola (“Apocalypse Now”), Stone (“Platoon”), Kubrick (“Full Metal Jacket”), nor Randall Wallace (“We Were Soldiers”) saw the war similarly. Ditto our conflicts in the Middle East, where directors as skilled as Ridley Scott (“Black Hawk Down”), Edward Zwick (“Courage Under Fire”), and David O. Russell (“Three Kings”) have brought singular looks to individual acts heroic (“Courage”), desperate (“Black Hawk Down”), and self-motivated (“Three Kings”). As for World War II, we’ve received unique- and varyingly successful- looks at this most-filmed war from Jean-Jacques Annaud (“Enemy at the Gates”), Terrence Malick (“The Thin Red Line”), Michael Bay (“Pearl Harbor”), Steven Spielberg (“Saving Private Ryan”), and now, John Woo. What Woo brings to the genre is a singular visual style (forget the imitators; he perfected it), thoughtful intelligence to the morality of the situation, and rich emotionalism and- dare I say it- sentimentality that makes you feel for the characters, their individual personalities and feelings, and the decisions they might have to make in the end. The thing I’ve failed to mention is, this isn’t Woo’s first foray into the war genre. Back in 1990, Woo filmed “Bullet in the Head,” the story of friendship torn open as three lifelong friends try to capitalize on the chaos in Saigon during the Vietnam war, and end up testing their loyalty towards one another. It’s quite an accomplishment- a powerful and gripping saga of loyalty, friendship, and betrayal in the best Woo tradition. If you can find it (it’s rare on DVD off the ‘net, and near impossible on VHS), check it out, and see what pre-Hollywood John Woo was like.
This is a pivotal time in John Woo’s career. After September 11, he called for directors to re-think the place of violence and bloodshed in film, asking filmmakers to consider films that encourage people and make people feel togetherness towards one another. It may seem hypocritical, since Woo is notoriously one of the most violent filmmakers in history, but look at “Face/Off,” “Windtalkers,” “The Killer,” and Woo’s best films in general. They’re all anti-violence in a beguiling, surprising way. How he attempts to move beyond action epics remains to be seen, but he’s given hints as to how he’s going to try. He wants to make the sort of films he was inspired by when he was growing up- Westerns, maybe a Comedy or two, even- Lord help us- a Musical (he hinted at a love for the genre with “Face/Off,” where he used “Over the Rainbow” to score one particularly powerful action scene). How will his fan base- divided after the hired hand smash of “Mission: Impossible 2”- react? It depends completely on the latitude given to him from studios to develop projects more personal to him (maybe even letting him in on the script development, as was the case with his best Hong Kong films). Save for “Face/Off” and “Windtalkers,” his Hollywood films are strictly studio jobs where he didn’t have much say in the end product (“M:i-2” was Cruise’s baby, while “Hard Target” was chopped up by the studio before release). This latitude is being put even further in danger by the lack of success of “Windtalkers” at the box-office. With a price tag said to be around $100 million, the film- in two weeks- has made less than $30 million, and will likely be off the top 10 by July 4th. Granted, competition is hot this summer, the hottest it’s been in years, and having to follow in the trail of “Black Hawk Down” and “We Were Soldiers” doesn’t help in the least. Neither do recent political/spy thrillers like “The Bourne Identity,” “The Sum of All Fears,” and “Bad Company.” Multiplexes aren’t big enough for all of them to succeed. The thing is…why does this one have to fail? It’s too good to become a mere footnote in the history of war cinema…and a neglected success in the career of one of the world’s most gifted- and personal- cinematic artists.
Grade for “Windtalkers”- A
The Films of John Woo
“Face/Off” (1997)- A+ (#19 Best Films; #6 Favorite Films)
“The Killer” (1989)- A+ (#56 Best Films)
“Hard-Boiled” (1992)- A
“Windtalkers” (2002)- A
“Bullet in the Head” (1990)- A
“Once a Thief” (1991)- A-
“A Better Tomorrow” (1986)- A-
“Broken Arrow” (1996)- B+ (#31 Favorite Films)
“Mission: Impossible 2” (2000)- B+
“Blackjack” (1998)- B
“Hard Target” (1993)- B
“John Woo’s Once a Thief” (1997)- C+
Films I Haven’t Seen (all available on Netflix)
*”A Better Tomorrow II” (1987)
*”Heroes Shed No Tears” (1986)
*”Last Hurrah for Chivalry” (1978)
*”Hand of Death” (1975)
