6.1 | / 10 |
Users | 3.7 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 3.7 |
Marine Joe Enders is assigned to protect Ben Yahzee, a Navajo code talker, the Marines' new secret weapon, but if Yahzee should fall into enemy hands, he's to protect the code at all costs. Against the backdrop of the horrific Battle of Saipan, when capture is imminent, Enders is forced to make a decision: if he can't protect his fellow Marine, can he bring himself to kill him to protect the code?
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Adam Beach, Peter Stormare, Noah Emmerich, Mark RuffaloAction | 100% |
War | 72% |
Drama | 17% |
Video codec: MPEG-2
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.42:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps)
English, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Why review Windtalkers almost five and a half years after its release? Well, for one thing, it's an opportunity to assess how far the Blu-ray format has advanced since this very early disc (which, for some reason, did not receive an official site review at the time). For another, this John Woo film cries out for remastering, preferably in an edition that also contains Woo's director's cut, currently available only on DVD. Aside from its other merits, Windtalkers contains some of the most elaborately choreographed scenes of combat of which Woo is still the undisputed master, and it was the last film in which he would do almost everything as practical effects. Since then, Woo has moved to CGI with the rest of the film industry. Windtalkers is usually described as a story about the Navajo "codetalkers", whose encrypted communications based on their native tongue proved invaluable to the American war effort on the Pacific front in World War II, because it couldn't be broken. Certainly the script by John Rice and Joe Batteer (Blown Away) makes intriguing use of codetalkers as an entry point into the company of Marines assigned to take the island of Saipan from the Japanese, so that it can serve as a landing base for the next wave of aerial assault. But as usual, Woo's real subject is the complex relationship between men who are both linked together and torn apart by circumstances and their own weaknesses—and frequently by guilt over past misdeeds. It's no accident that the two main characters of Windtalkers share a Catholic background: Joe Enders, the white Marine, is a lapsed Catholic, and Ben Yahzee, the Navajo codetalker, was educated in a Catholic school. Woo, himself a Catholic, has long been preoccupied with sin, forgiveness and expiation through blood, suffering and sacrifice. These themes sound strongly in Windtalkers, which, for that reason, feels much more like a generic war film than would any World War II film made by an American celebrating the Greatest Generation.
From the opening shots of the mountains of the Sonoran Desert, the limitations of the MPEG-2 codec used on MGM's 1080p Blu-ray of Windtalkers are obvious. Even though the shots are reportedly stock footage, the lack of fine detail in what should be breathtaking vistas is readily apparent. The same lack is notable in long shots throughout the film, although Woo is such a master of choreographed mayhem that eventually the viewer simply surrenders to the experience and stops noticing the shortcomings. Shortcomings nevertheless remain in the fine textures of clothing, faces, vegetation, dirt, indeed just about anywhere one chooses to focus. Just how much of the deficiency is due to the limitations of MPEG-2 encoding, and how much can be attributed to pre-compression filtering necessary to accommodate the film on a BD-25, is impossible to say. A film of this length and with such demanding action sequences required a BD-50, and certainly needed an advanced codec such as AVC. Still, considering the technical limitations under which MGM was laboring at the early stage of Blu-ray's existence, they produced a watchable image. Compression artifacts and macroblocking did not appear to be an issue, although such phenomena might become evident on large-format front-projection systems. Nor were there any scenes plagued by the kind of video noise that were the bane of MPEG-2 in the early days of DVD. Given the low price at which Windtalkers can now be acquired, if you find yourself double-dipping for an improved edition somewhere down the line, you won't have wasted your money on this version.
The DTS-HD MA 5.1 track is no doubt the main reason why Windtalkers was selected for an early release on Blu-ray, because it's a showcase for the format's audio virtues. (The 5.1 mix was impressive on DVD as well.) Indeed, the setup menu is something of a historical curiosity, because it includes the word "lossless" in parentheses, as a reminder that in those days people needed to be told what this new form of DTS was. Woo's Hollywood films (and his Chinese films since learning the Hollywood style) are renowned for their energetic soundtracks, and Windtalkers is especially bombastic, as the sound designers try to out-Ryan Steven Spielberg in re-creating the hell of battle. Explosions, mortar fire, machine guns, artillery, aerial bombardment and all manner of small arms burst, kick and boom from all sides with relentless punch and impact. If you're not careful where you set your volume, your hearing may end up as badly damaged as that of Sergeant Enders. The quieter portions in between the mayhem are well-balanced, though, so that it shouldn't be necessary to raise the volume to catch the dialogue between the soldiers as they deal with the anticipation and aftermath, each in his own way. James Horner's typically fine score has been appropriately mixed so that it sometimes blends in smoothly with the action and at other times rises above it, like the cosmic commentary that one frequently finds in Woo's best films.
Not surprisingly, given the demands of fitting a 134-minute film onto a BD-25, the disc has no supplements, not even a trailer.
Windtalkers was not a box office success, and I've always attributed that to a marketing campaign that raised false expectations. Audiences arrived expecting to see a film about codetalkers, and instead they experienced a bizarre hybrid of The Killer and Sands of Iwo Jima. Woo, I suspect, never fully grasped the American veneration of the Greatest Generation, certainly not in the same way that he responded at a deeply intuitive level to the stories from his childhood that he would go on to immortalize in Red Cliff. But he knew how to shoot the hero, and Windtalkers remains an effective drama. We just need a new version, properly mastered and encoded and preferably with both the theatrical cut and Woo's director's cut.
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Unrated Director's Cut
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2-Disc Special Edition
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