Windtalkers (Special Director's Edition)

Director John Woos sensibilities have always run to the pulpy, comic book side of the cinematic equation, resulting in the yin of visually gripping, eye candy action sequences--and the yang of less than believable emotional content. Thats been fine when the material hes tackling is the sort of intense but flight-of-fancy fluff such as Face/Off (1997) and Mission: Impossible 2 (2000), but here Woo is depicting a subject of enormous historical, social and political importance to the world. Despite a noticeable restraint compared to his other work (the filmmaker clearly realizes that hes in somewhat uncharted territory here), Windtalkers (2002) is simply the wrong script for him. He carefully builds a quartet of protagonists with real-life fears and inner lives, then proceeds to turn them into full-fledged killing machine warriors, capable of piling up literally hundreds of enemy bodies to a man, his vision of American soldiers so skewed that its as if the film wanders from Saving Private Ryan (1998) territory into the realm of science fiction. It also doesnt help that many of the second-half locations are clearly southern California and not the tropical island setting theyre doubling for, or that the windtalking of the Navajo heroes is really a sideline to the character arc of Joe Enders Nicolas Cage, only peripherally involved in the code language activities that are supposedly the subject of the film. From The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) through Steel Helmet (1951) to Ryan, the best images of WWII have always been stark, raw and uncomfortably, even brutally real, but Windtalkers forgets that, presenting a graphic and exciting but, at times, absurdly phony Rambo-level vision of war that does its veterans and victims no great service by amping up their heroics to superhero level. The audience is more than aware by now that the participants in these battles were all quite heroic enough without Woos help. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

ccPersonal on-camera introduction by the director
3 audio commentary tracks
Historical documentary
WWII tribute
Multi-view feature
Scene diaries
"Actors' Boot Camp" featurette
Photo gallery
English 5.1 Surround
French Stereo Surround
English, French, Spanish & Portuguese language subtitles
Special features subtitled in French, Spanish & Portuguese