Windtalkers (2002)Movies

GMovies from Film Forum, 06/20/02Speaking of Windtalkers, critics are bemoaning what could have been an affecting story about the influence of Native Americans in the America's World War II efforts. Instead, many are claiming that director John Woo (The Killer, Face/Off, Mission Impossible 2) has turned it into two hours of excruciating, gratuitous violence, reducing the cultural story to merely a useful plot device.Peter T. Chattaway (Vancouver Courier) says, "The violence takes place on such a grand scale that it dwarfs the characters, who are, after all, just cogs in a larger military machine. [Woo] … wants this to be a brutally realistic war movie, in the mold of Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down, and the resulting barrage of sound and fury, with occasional heroics thrown...