I recently saw Windtalkers, a World War II movie about a Marine assigned to protect another Navajo Marine who uses his native language as an unbreakable radio cypher.
When the movie came out, it raised some controversy because Sgt. Joe Enders (Caucasian) is given orders to kill his Navajo protectee "windtalker" private Yazee to prevent the "code" from falling into enemy hands. Needles to say, U.S. military denied ever giving such orders.
I wanted to see the movie for a long time, but did not want to pay for it. War movies in the U.S. are usually funded by the military, and in return they have to be a kind of a commercial it. I did not feel like paying to see an ad for increasing an overblown Pentagon budget. Luckily, the movie came into my local library.
[As an interesting aside, U.S. military refused to fund Francis Ford Copolla's Apocalypse Now because of one sentence - where Martin Sheen is given an order to liquidate insane Col. Kurtz.]
The movie shows a bus load of Navajo Indians laughingly, merrily going to enlist. When they arrive to the training camp, Yazee says something in Navajo language, and the vigilant translator puts into subtitles as: "I have never seen so many white brothers in one place" (emphasis mine). In light of the slaughter of Indians (Native Americans), and their miserable treatment afterwards, I could not believe that Navajo Indians call cowboys "white brothers". Any Navajo's, please advise.
Yazee is very eloquent at describing the mistreatment of Indians through history, topping it off with a personal story: as a kid, he was locked up for two days in the basement of his Catholic church for speaking Navajo. Now, that language was his greatest asset in the military.
The movie has decent special effects, and a bunch of Rambo-style shootouts. Airplane fly-overs seem too crisp, smelling of computer generated graphics too much. Bullets are authentically whizzing and poking holes in soldiers splashing blood all over. Very kung-fu like knife fight choreography (Navajo vs. Japs) is identically repeated 20 minutes later, with the same camera angle. The final run with the enemy behind the back shooting poor Nicolas Cage at least 17 times seemed a bit ridiculous - kids might believe this kind of bullet-dodging moves, but even they do not have patience to watch it for so long.
Otherwise, the movie is quite watchable, and gives a balanced view of glory and hardships of a soldier's life. The best moment of the movie comes when a Marine who picks on Yazee from the beginning repents, extrapolating the arch-rivalry of cowboys and Indians: (paraphrasing) "maybe in 15 years we will be together with Japanese..." Very funy and intelligent.
Posted by laza at January 23, 2004 09:20 PM