Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
This guy loves it. This guy hates it. It’s great. It’s unreleasable. Woo had total control. Woo had no control. I GIVE UP!! I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO EXPECT!!
Try this one on first:
Hey there Moriarty, I just got out of a screening of John Woo's Wind Talkers at the University of Southern California. Even better than a free movie was the chance to sit in on a Q & A with John Woo, John Rice & Joe Batteer he writers (the tandem behind Blown Away and Chasers), and the assistant sound designer, the latter three alumni of the esteemed university.
John Woo said the movie is about friendship and to his credit the movie has heart. I came out of this movie like I did so many of his previous ones. I've always liked John Woo as a director and I've always felt that he has far more talent than that which usually makes it to the screen. As much as I love the way he blows things up, and the style in which he does so, I am never entirely happy when the curtain closes and I go home. Somehow his movies end up with a wonderfully golden Hollywood treatment and unfortunately Windtalkers is no different.
Nicholas Cage is assigned to protect and if necessary kill a Navajo radioman. The premise is that the Japanese have cracked all previous military code. The Navajo language was thus adopted, and Navajo Indians were put into the field to radio pertinent information. They are then assigned bodyguards who have to keep them alive, or kill them to prevent their capture. Nicholas Cage and Christian Slater play these morally ambiguous characters. The best thing about Slater's performance is his death. I have never seen a soldier die that way in any other WWII film. It is brief but beautiful.
I should have known what was in store when the MGM logo flashed and roared across the screen. I'd hate to stereotype a studio but this is their type of movie. It never takes itself seriously and at the same time takes itself too seriously. The movie is twice removed from a war satire. There were far too many clichés that made it seems silly and everybody in the film plays their role with serious overtones, attempting to convey the intensity and severity of men at war.
Once the scary movie people get a hold of a WWII spoof they will most certainly rip this movie to pieces. There are genuine kernels of emotion, moments where I clinched my fists, and beautiful war scenes that we would expect from a big budget war film and the mastery of John Woo. He doesn't skimp on the war action either. He brings it with intensity, causing the entire audience to jump on more than one occasion.
But between the genuinely good moments one has to deal with slo-mo's of Nicholas Cage running along the beach in a tight white t-shirt, and voice over work from Frances O'Connor as Nurse Rita Swelton that is pure comedy. The characters are flat and stereotypical. Cage uses all three of his emotions in the movie to the fullest extent. He may only have a few sides, but he has definitely mastered the ability to stare off longingly into space. There were points where I laughed out loud which isn't a good sign for a serious war movie.
John Woo said that they have two endings to the film. I won't ruin either of them, but the one they went with is as clichéd and silly as the movie itself. It's the ending everyone expects it to be and I'll leave it at that. The one that they didn't go with is the antithesis of the one they went with. Take it or leave it.
Hearing John Woo talk about his film answered so many questions I had about the movie itself. John Woo is in love with Genre. He is known as an action star, but he confessed to us what his next 2 projects are. The next film is a movie with Nicholas Cage and Chow-Yun-Fat about migrant workers building the railroad. Cage will play an Irish immigrant and Fat will obviously be a Chinese immigrant. It will be a movie about their racial prejudices and how people can overcome them (sort of like this movie too). The movie after that will be a Western but he gave few comments on that. Woo said he is interested in making an Action/Musical and a Comedy as well. His love for genre is quite evident in this movie. It has everything a WWII movie is supposed to have, but unfortunately there is nothing more, there is very little substance underneath this war movie, which is what I should have expected from MGM all along.
Okay. So then I turn around and read this one:
Hey Harry,
I sent this in awhile back, and now with the recent crop of positive reviews, I feel compelled to send it again.
I caught this movie on Monday (now several weeks ago) here in Austin at the UT Union Theater. I left about 45 minutes in to call a friend and ask him to tape some TV. As I was leaving the theater, a battle started, but I really didn't care. When I returned to my seat, I glanced at my watch and realized in horror that the movie wasn't even halfway done. It's really that bad. Here's why:
Contrary to another of your advance reviews, Nicholas Cage as Sergeant Joe Enders doesn't make magic onscreen. He turns in an incredibly average performance and I was genuinely more entertained by his turn in Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Adam Beach seems to have been picked solely for his ethnicity as Private Ben Yahzee. He certainly can't act. Christian Slater manages to avoid embarrassing himself, but the same cannot be said for Noah Emmerich, who is terrible as bigoted Corporal "Chick" Rogers.. Finally, Frances O'Connor's Nurse Rita Swelton isn't bad per se, it's just that her character is pointless and wasted. After a sappy opening few scenes between her and Enders, her letters are wholly ignored by the character, and by extension the movie and audience as well. Her storyline isn't even wrapped up in the end.
Which brings us to the script. Arguably the strong point of the movie, it still contains major failings. Much of the humor works, as does the portrayal of Navajo culture and language, but everything else feels labored and forced. The whole point of the movie is to show the Navajo language's importance in the war against the Japanese, but it often fails in this by showing the language used in situations where it would have been just as effective to speak in regular code, if not plain English. Indeed, at one point English IS used. Character relations are simplistic and uncreative, and often scenes intended to be dramatic (such as an exchange between Enders and his commanding officer) fall flat. But even these problems could have been overlooked if we got some great...
ACTION. This is John Woo, master of the gun, who had the potential to turn the battles we've seen so many times in other films into a transcendent ballet of bullets and body parts, horrifying and beautiful at the same time. And he fails miserably. Where is the John Woo that made Hard-Boiled and The Killer? Heck, even the guy that made Face/Off and M:I2? This is some of the most boring, laughable action ever to appear on a movie screen. Battles are clunky and slow. Nicholas Cage fires bullets into an endless supply of Japanese, but instead of being thrilling, it was silly: you could hear derisive chuckles in the audience on more than one occasion. Behind Enemy Lines was more competent. The whole thing that Woo seemed to have any clue of how to film was the flamethrower. And two incredible streams of liquid flame do not a war movie make.
This movie was a horrible disappointment, and had I actually paid for it, an incredible waste of money. The best part was eating my 99 cent 7-Layer Nachos in line. I like nachos.
- MeekayD
I’m still wishing JedTheHutt had weighed in. He was the first person I talked to about it, and his hatred for the film, combined with his overall love of Woo, was fascinating to me. I’ll say this... I’m at least interested at this point, and considering it’s MGM, the company that almost seems to try to sneak movies past the consumer, that’s half the battle.
"Moriarty" out.
