Windtalkers

Plot

During World War II, US Marine corporal Joe Enders returns to active duty after surviving on the Solomon Islands against the Imperial Japanese Army that killed his entire squad and wounded his left ear. Enders and Sgt. Pete "Ox" Henderson receive new assignments to protect Navajo code talkers Pvt. Ben Yahzee and Pvt. Charlie Whitehorse in a JASCO.

Yahzee and Whitehorse, childhood friends from the Navajo tribe, are trained to send and receive coded messages that direct artillery fire. Enders and Henderson are instructed to kill their code talkers if capture is imminent so the code cannot fall into enemy hands. Both Enders and Henderson resent their new assignments, and the Navajos also endure racial harassment by some of the white Marines, notably Private Chick.

Yahzee and Whitehorse take part in the invasion of Saipan in the Mariana Islands. After the beachhead is secured, the Marines come under friendly fire from U.S. artillery. With Yahzee's radio destroyed and the convoy unable to call off the bombardment, Yahzee suggests disguising himself as a Japanese soldier and slipping behind enemy lines to commandeer a radio, with Enders as his prisoner. Yahzee redirects artillery fire onto the Japanese position.

That night, the Marines camp in the nearby village of Tanapag. As Yahzee is temporarily reassigned to the command post to translate a code, Enders becomes increasingly conflicted about killing Yahzee versus following his orders, but his request to be relieved of duty is denied. The next morning, Japanese soldiers ambush the village. Henderson is killed, and Whitehorse is on the verge of capture. Realizing that the Japanese will torture him for the code, Enders throws a grenade at Whitehorse, killing him and his captors. Yahzee returns to Tanapag and, upon seeing Whitehorse's body, confronts Enders, revealing that he was the one who killed Whitehorse. An outraged Yahzee points his weapon at Enders but cannot bring himself to pull the trigger. Later, Enders confesses that he hated having to kill Whitehorse and that, like Henderson, his mission was to protect the code above all else.

The Marines face another mission, ambushed near a minefield on Mount Tapochau. Enders, Yahzee, Chick, and Cpl. Pappas take cover on a ridge, witnessing Japanese artillery fire on a Marine convoy below. Enraged over Whitehorse's death, Yahzee charges the Japanese line, leading to both he and Enders being shot while calling in an airstrike. Fearing capture and torture for the code, Yahzee pleads for Enders to kill him, but Enders refuses, carrying him to safety as Navy planes bomb the Japanese positions. Despite this, Enders is mortally wounded and dies.

Back in the U.S., Yahzee and his family sit atop Point Mesa in Monument Valley, Arizona, and, wearing the sacred necklaces and Navajo ceremonial dress, perform the Navajo ritual of paying their respects to Enders.

Cast

Nicolas Cage as Sergeant Joe Enders

Adam Beach as Private Ben Yahzee

Peter Stormare as Gunnery Sergeant Richard Hjelmsted, Platoon Sergeant

Noah Emmerich as Private First Class Charles "Chick" Clusters, a BAR gunner

Mark Ruffalo as Corporal Milo Pappas, a rifleman

Christian Slater as Sergeant Peter "Ox" Henderson

Roger Willie as Private Charlie Whitehorse

Brian Van Holt as Private Andrew Harrigan, the flamethrower man

Martin Henderson as Private Thomas Nellie, a rifleman

Frances O'Connor as Pharmacist's Mate 2nd Class Rita Swelton

Scott Atkinson as Camp Tarawa Staff Sergeant

Jason Isaacs as Major Mellitz

Production

In November 1998, it was announced United Artists would develop Windtalkers as a directorial vehicle for John Woo. Scenes were cut from the film based on their inaccuracies, including anachronistic profanity. Other scenes depicted war crimes committed by the Marines were removed, such as the collection of gold teeth from dead Japanese soldiers, and a scene in which the character Enders kills a prisoner with a flamethrower, with Marine corps advisor Lieutenant Colonel Morgan reasoning that it would out of character for an intelligent sergeant to kill a knowledgable asset. Despite this, the film depicts the Marines being ordered to kill the code talkers to prevent their capture, although there is no evidence stating this was practiced.

The opening scene was originally storyboarded to take place in Tarawa, but it was never shot. The romantic relationship between Enders and Swelton was shortened for the film, with studio interference resulting in the addition of a scene at the code talker's training school, and the insertion of an anachronistic 50 star American flag at the end of the film. The technical and historical consultants emphasized adherence to a historically accurate depiction, with armourer Rock Galotti removing all lugs from M1 carbines, and Japanese advisor Dan King focused on ensuring Japanese insignia on tanks remained accurate. Roger Willie also served as an advisor to Woo regarding the Navajo ritual depicted in the film. Costume supervisor Nick Scarano had 1300 Marine and 1000 Japanese uniforms manafactured from special fabrics using historically researched material, blending camouflage and green fatigues as well as giving the costumes a worn look to represent the mismatched combination of soldiers later in the war.

Filming locations on Hawaii included Kualoa Ranch, the location where Lost and Jurassic Park were shot. To portray the Marines in the film the producers recruited extras that were volunteers from Schofield Barracks Army Base, Hickam Air Force Base, Pearl Harbor Naval Station, and Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station. Some of the actual Marines from 4th Force Recon Company were used in the film portraying their actual job. As many as 700 extras were present on set at once, hired locally. Hawaii's large Japanese population provided a large amount of extras to play soldiers in the Imperial Japanese army. The core cast and 62 extras went through a week of boot camp training. A signigicant amount of the filming also took place in Los Angeles, with the move to California increasing the budget and resulting in the rebuilding of the native village set, with 5 villages being built in total. The Battle of Saipan sequence required demanding Steadicam work.

Reception

Box office

$41 million at the US box-office and a total of $77.6 million worldwide, against a production budget of $115 million.

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 33% of 161 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "The action sequences are expertly staged. Windtalkers, however, sinks under too many clichés and only superficially touches upon the story of the code talkers." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 51 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B+ on scale of A to F.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 2 out of 4 stars, remarking that "the filmmakers have buried it beneath battlefield cliches, while centering the story on a white character played by Nicolas Cage". Robert Koehler of Variety called it "A powerful premise turned into a stubbornly flat, derivative war movie."

The film was criticized for featuring the Navajo characters only in supporting roles; they were not the primary focus of the film. The film was ranked number four on Careeraftermilitary.com's "10 Most Inaccurate Military Movies Ever Made" which also included The Patriot, The Hurt Locker, U-571, The Green Berets, Pearl Harbor, Battle of the Bulge, Red Tails, Enemy at the Gates and Flyboys on its list of falsified war movie productions.

About the response, John Woo said: "The main themes of Windtalkers are friendship and understanding. Unfortunately, the studio wanted a John Wayne movie, just a typical American hero film with explosions every few minutes. I had to make them understand that this wasn't a story about heroes. It's a story about a man and his own demons, trying to redeem himself from war. I made the movie that way, but some people in the studio didn't appreciate it and, in the end, I guess neither did the audience." In 2023, Woo said: “There were not many people who really understood that movie or liked it. It was not good timing. The movie had to be released in 2001. Then 9/11 happened, so they had to push it. They were so afraid audiences wouldn’t want to watch a war movie at that time. I had a conflict with the writers. I said, “My kind of movie is usually about friendship, respect, and honor.” But the writers didn't feel good about that. They said, “The enemy is the enemy. The enemy has to be destroyed.” I tried to make it a human story. The audience didn't expect a movie about friendship. But I'm still proud of that movie.“