Posted: 06/15/2002

Windtalkers

(2002)

by Hank Yuloff

Latest Hollywood war film finally addresses the little-known practice of using Navajo Indians to keep the enemy from decoding military communications.

One of the more interesting things I remember learning from Mr. Solkovitz in high school history class was that, in World War Two, the United States used Navajo Indians as code talkers because their native language was so complex that the Japanese could not decipher what they were saying — sort of like a human Enigma machine.

Windtalkers, which is the story of the beginning of that project, traces the lives of two of the Navajo men chosen to be Code Talkers. It was so important that the Code not fall into enemy hands that the Marines assigned a man to protect each Code Talker. Actually their job was to protect the code, not the man.

The two pairs of men we follow are Sergeant Joe Enders (Nicholas Cage, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin) and Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach, Joe Dirt), and Sergeant Peter “Ox” Henderson (Christian Slater, 3000 Miles to Graceland) and Charles Whitehorse (newcomer Roger Willie).

This is an excellent movie. It is a full on story and allows for a lot of character depth in the midst of a highly charged action film. We get to know why Sergeant Joe Enders (Cage) is so driven to get back into combat after being seriously injured. His inner torture and feelings of guilt for having lost the first fifteen men under his command would have otherwise haunted him forever. We see the emergence of the two Navajo, Yahzee and Whitehorse, striving to overcome the racial bigotry they faced when joining the unit — having to be twice the fighters in order to gain respect from just plain ignorant men. One of the most unique moments is when we witness Yahzee and Enders exchange personalities in the middle of an intense battle.

Keep in mind that this is a war movie and that the war in the Pacific Theater took place in a very up close and personal way. There are many scenes of hand-to-hand combat and the gore that goes with it. John Wayne movies were never this graphic, maybe because in black and white you don’t see the blood as much. Better be careful if you want to bring the younger kids.

I have a lot of thoughts and points of interest concerning Windtalkers: First, it is a movie that truly lives up to its trailer. We are given exactly what we were promised: a full-on war flick that had a story to go with it. I’d almost put it in the class of Saving Private Ryan or HBO’s Band of Brothers. I’d liken it to Full Metal Jacket for drama.

Some words about the actors and the storyline are also necessary. Frances O’Connor (the mom in A.I.) plays a nurse who helps Cage at the beginning of the movie and continues to send him letters at the front. The affection we hear in her letters are a good counterpoint to the war action we are seeing, and give us the opportunity to get further into Sergeant Enders’ head. Roger Willie is excellent as Private Whitehorse. He showed a fierce fighting spirit and complete soul that made the other men respect him. Mark Ruffalo (The misfit Yates from The Castle), Noah Emmerich (Love & Sex) and Peter Stormare are all good as composites of Marines with whom the Navajo had to deal. But Stormare’s hard to place accent, which was fine when he played the European arms dealer in this month’s Bad Company, was very distracting.

The story was the work of writing team John Rice and Joe Batteer. This was their fourth collaboration, the most noteworthy being Blown Away. They gave director John Woo (Face/Off, Broken Arrow) a lot to work with and he did an amazing job of mixing story and effects to give us a war drama with style.

Hank Yuloff is an advertising specialty pro in Los Angeles, who grew up on war flicks like A Bridge Too Far, M*A*S*H, Patton and The Dirty Dozen.

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