Too often while watching the film I kept thinking, if only he'd made this in Hong Kong. He'd have been forced to keep it to about 100 minutes and been able to go really over the top with the violence. If you know his Hong Kong films you'll know how riotously excessive the violence in those films can be; I kept getting the feeling here that Woo wanted to go really over the top, but something was holding him back from doing so.

What hurts the film the worst are the pretty average performances and characterisation. Adam Beach in particular is kind of hard to read; I'm not sure whether he plays Ben Yahzee the way he does because he's taking the character's basic naivete into consideration or because he's just not particularly good. The thin, shabby characterisation doesn't help overcome the feeling of predictability the film gives off; there comes a certain point early on where you just know something potentially disastrous will happen, and sure enough it does.

Windtalkers was made with honourable intentions; Woo wanted to revive the memory of the Navajo codetalkers and to try and create a positive representation of Native Americans on the screen. It's not a bad film, really, not as such. It's just that, from someone with the evident filmmaking skills that John Woo has, we might've expected a lot better. Basically, if you like watching things blow up, you will find much to enjoy here as there are many explosions. But if you want a better war film by John Woo, get Bullet In The Head out on video instead.