Lately, I haven't been too impressed with the movies coming to the theaters. If I'm going to spend the $8.75 to see movies on the big screen, I expect to get something for the money. Therefore, I wasn't expecting too much from Windtalkers. I'm glad to say that my expectations of the film were met and the film was actually quite good.

There are certain topics that are important to know about in order to be "educated" - examples would include the Holocaust, Shakespeare, classical music, and US history. This film will educate you about a part of US history that few people would have carefully thought about before the film - the role of the Navajo code talkers in World War II. Many different codes and ciphers were used during the war and the Navajo-based code was the only one that was never deciphered by our enemy Japan. One could argue that the code played a pivotal role in our country emerging victoriously from the war.

The acting in the film is quite good. Nicolas Cage was a good choice for playing the marine Joe Enders. His tone of voice, facial expressions, pauses in speech, and overall movement contributed to the movie. Adam Beach has a tough role portraying Ben Yahzee, the Navajo code talker. He is able to show many different emotions throughout the film quite convincingly. While the acting by the leads was excellent, I felt that the movie was too centered on these two characters and would have been more complete if other characters were developed more.

On to some general comments about the movie. This movie is an example of an R-rated movie without sex scenes. If you're interested in that go see something else! This movie earns its R rating because of the extreme amount of violence and carnage shown in the film. There are no fewer than 20,000 gunshots and other weapon firings during the movie. If you're the kind of moviegoer that doesn't like gory violence then you might not like this movie either. I feel that the war scenes were important to show with the amount of violence that was included; I wouldn't be surprised if the actual war was even more gruesome than the movie made it out to be.

Overall, this was a very good war movie that I got more out of than I thought I would. Even though it was filled with bloody battles it did make me think. Hopefully you will enjoy the movie.



Recommended:
Yes

Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age