Windtalkers
Being a fan of John Woo's earlier Hong Kong films, it has been depressing to see how bad most of his American films have been (Face/Off being an exception, although I am gradually losing respect for it over the years). Then comes Windtalkers, which really is the nail in the coffin for me. Easily the worst film I've seen all year (and I watched Jason X - at least that was funny, although usually for all the wrong reasons), Windtalkers is a horribly cheesy, badly written, badly acted pile of tripe that should never have been made let alone released into the world. The lines that spew out of the 'actors' mouths are so hackneyed and devoid of intelligence that a propagandic (is that a word?) war film from the 40's would be ashamed to use them. Nicholas Cage mopes around like some sort of drunkard, until he's thrust into some action where he becomes totally invincible, with the ability to take out dozens of soldiers at a time armed with just a pistol. Then Christian Slater pops up every now and then for no good reason to play a harmonica and pipe duet with a Native American (no I'm not joking). The action scenes aren't even that good, the explosions are ridiculously over the top and always billowing with flames even when they shouldn't be, and all we see are mindlessly repetative quickly cut shots of extras getting machine gunned or bludgeoned with bayonets. You can tell that Woo has tried to emulate a more gritty Saving Private Ryan style of violence rather than his usual balletic slow-mo stuff, but he has just failed miserably. It tries to touch on various 'issues' such as racism but does it so heavy handedly and just plain badly that it never works. As for tackling racism, the film just ends up being racist itself. We never see the Japanese side of things or are let to feel anything for them, they act merely as cannon fodder for the invulnerable Nicholas Cage. Theres much more to slag off, but I'm getting tired, and I'm starting to have disturbing flashbacks to the film, just trust me - avoid at all costs. 2/10 |
