Review – Windtalkers

This John Woo action epic is set on the island of Saipan during World War Two, where my grandpa was stationed. Thus I should confess that I was a little more interested in the movie than the average filmgoer might be. That disclaimer aside, one gets what one should come to expect from Woo and war: lots of lavish battle scenes that simultaneously glamorize combat and bemoan its inescapable result. In addition, the story of Navajo code-talkers also features a fair amount of cliché-ridden speechifying about the wrongness of racism. Overall not a bad effort, though it comes across as a super-slick reheat of The Sands of Iwo Jima and its general ilk with just enough 21st-century sensibility to make it palatable. Mildly amusing