June 14, 2002 -- "Windtalkers" is a bloody war film that is long on action, but is hampered by a thin story and underwritten characters. It tells a small part of the story of the Native American code talkers of World War II, and doesn't tell it very well at that.

The saga of the code talkers goes all the way back to the Revolutionary War, in World War I, a group of eight Choctaw code talkers helped turn the tide of war for the American Expeditionary force by confounding the Germans who were unable to decipher the Choctaw language. Many tribes have aided the U.S. armed forces in this way over the years, including the Cherokee, Cheyenne, Chippewa, Comanche, Dakota, Hopi, Kiowa, Lakota, Menominee, Muscogee, Navajo, Oneida, Osage, Pawnee, Sac and Fox, Seminole and Yankton Sioux. The Ironic thing is, the U.S. government tried to stamp out native languages for years, only to discover these languages, practically unknown outside the U.S., were very valuable during times of war. These languages can serve as "codes" because the languages are unique, and unrelated to language groups in the rest of the world. This movie deals with only the Navajo, but the Hopi, Comanche and probably members of other tribes also served as code talkers during World War II.

Nicolas Cage of "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" stars as Joe Enders, a physically and spiritually wounded U.S. Marine Sergeant assigned to protect Navajo code talker Private Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach of "Joe Dirt"). Sergeant Peter 'Ox' Henderson (Christian Slater of "3,000 Miles to Graceland") is assigned to protect code talker Private Charles Whitehorse (played by Roger Willie). Both soldiers are under orders to kill the code talkers if they have to in order to prevent their capture by the enemy. Enders tries to remain emotionally distant from Yahzee for that reason. Henderson takes a different approach. He tries to get to know Whitehorse and to understand the Navajo culture.

Enders is haunted by a previous mission in which all the men under his command were killed and he was seriously wounded. The ghosts of those men come to him often, one in particular who cursed him with his dying breath. Yahzee tries to use Navajo mojo to exorcise Enders' demons. Enders is befriended by a pretty young Navy nurse, Rita Swelton (Frances O'Connor of "A.I."). Although Swelton practically throws herself at Enders, he remains emotionally shut down. Enders is guilt-ridden and tortured throughout the whole movie. He fights savagely and recklessly, yet, at times, there still seems to be a spark of humanity in him. As monotonously grim as Enders is, he is more interesting than the other soldiers in the unit. There is the usual racist who hates Indians, there is a guy who hyperventilates when he's excited. There's a guy who uses a flamethrower on the enemy, but feels bad about it.

There is plenty of action in the film. There is blood all over the place. It gets monotonous after awhile. It isn't exciting, just repetitive. A man's head gets chopped off. People's hands and feet are cut off or blown off. People are stabbed and shot. Throats are slit. It is quite messy, but not all that interesting to watch. There is little in the way of character development. If we got to know the people killing or getting killed, we might care about what happens to them. The enemy is inhuman, faceless, just things to slaughter. At least in "We Were Soldiers," there was some attempt to show the enemy as human. It would have been better if the soldiers in the story were at least interesting. Even "The Thin Red Line," as plodding as it was, was better in this regard.

John Woo ("Mission Impossible II") is a fine action film director, but he needed more substantial story and characters to hang the action on. The screenplay, by John Rice and Joe Batteer ("Blown Away") lacks both. As critic Eric D. Snider once wrote, "To be interesting or memorable, movies must be driven by plot or character. Either we like the stuff that's happening, or we like the people it's happening to. The best movies do both." This movie is lacking in both areas. It rates a C.

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