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Windtalkers [DVD] [2002]
 
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Windtalkers [DVD] [2002]

DVD ~ Nicolas Cage|Adam Beach|Christian Slater|Peter Stormare
2.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
RRP: £19.99
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Frequently Bought Together

Windtalkers [DVD] [2002] + We Were Soldiers [DVD] [2002] + Black Hawk Down (2 Disc Set) [2002] [DVD]
Total RRP: £57.97
Price For All Three: £10.94

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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Windtalkers [DVD] [2002]
79% buy the item featured on this page:
Windtalkers [DVD] [2002] 2.4 out of 5 stars (42)
£2.98
We Were Soldiers [DVD] [2002]
8% buy
We Were Soldiers [DVD] [2002] 3.8 out of 5 stars (4)
£3.98
Enemy at the Gates [2001] [DVD]
5% buy
Enemy at the Gates [2001] [DVD] 3.9 out of 5 stars (68)
£4.18
The Thin Red Line [1999] [DVD]
4% buy
The Thin Red Line [1999] [DVD] 3.8 out of 5 stars (84)
£3.98
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Product details

  • Actors: Nicolas Cage|Adam Beach|Christian Slater|Peter Stormare
  • Directors: John Woo
  • Format: Collector's Edition, Dubbed, PAL, Widescreen
  • Language English, Japanese
  • Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)
  • Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
  • Number of discs: 1
  • Classification: 15
  • Studio: MGM Entertainment
  • DVD Release Date: 10 Feb 2003
  • Run Time: 128 minutes
  • Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
  • ASIN: B00005RDPX
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 8,526 in DVD (See Bestsellers in DVD)

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Reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review
John Woo's reputation as the world's best action director hits a major breakdown with Windtalkers, an overlong, over-silly, overwritten and overacted entry in the current American craze for war movies that combine extreme patriotism with hordes of Yankee extras getting bloodily cut to pieces until a final uplifting victory. US Marine Nicolas Cage--with a scarred ear and a fed-up look--is given the job of looking after Navajo Adam Beach, whose complex language is the basis of a code being used to fool the Japanese in the Pacific during World War II. His orders are to protect not Beach but the code, (including orders to kill Beach if it looks like capture is imminent) which makes for an uneasy progress from hatred-at-first-sight through growing respect to agonised male bonding.

From an interesting historical footnote, Woo and his collaborators spin out an unlikely and repetitive platoon story, with an all-cliché bunch of grunts spitting out hardboiled dialogue between the noise and violence. The Woo touch is evident; from the astonishing pullback from a butterfly over bloodied waters to the thick of hand-to-hand fighting, but too many of the battle scenes are just more explosions-and-body-parts along the same lines of Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down.

On the DVD: Windtalkers contains an 11-minute TV filler making-of featurette; footage of the entire cast (except Cage) romping through the research process at Actors' Bootcamp; plus on-set diaries, i.e., B-roll footage of the crew working on four big action scenes. Of the two commentary tracks, the first offers a lot of mutual stroking with the occasional insight from Cage and Slater, the other offers Navajo actor Roger Willie and real-life codetalker/technical advisor Albert Smith. The language options, for soundtrack and subtitles, are English and (oddly) Czech. --Kim Newman

Special Features

  • Bravo Special – Behind the scenes ‘making of’ featurette with the cast and crew. Includes interviews with Nicolas Cage and John Woo
  • Actors’ Bootcamp – Made exclusively for the DVD, this brilliant featurette follows the actors through a gruelling few weeks of real-life marine training that Woo, who drafted in real American army soldiers to appear in the film, sent them on to bring the true essence of war and camararderie to the film.
  • Fly on the Set Diaries – 4 raw set pieces that observe the construction of 4 key battle scenes, bringing the true nature of filming to life with explosive close-up action. Viewers can also jump to that specific scene in the film.
  • Audio commentaries – 2 revealing feature length commentaries with Cage and Christian Slater, and Navajo’s Albert Smith and Roger Willie
  • Behind the Scenes Photo Gallery


See all Reviews

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Customer Reviews

42 Reviews
5 star:
 (5)
4 star:
 (9)
3 star:
 (2)
2 star:
 (6)
1 star:
 (20)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
2.4 out of 5 stars (42 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars A good story lies buried in here somewhere, 12 Sep 2006
By Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: Windtalkers [DVD] [2002] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC] (DVD)
From mid-1942 to the end of the Pacific war, approximately 400 Navajo Indians served in all six Marine divisions, Marine Raider battalions and Marine parachute units as "code talkers". Their job was to transmit military traffic by radio and telephone in their native language. It was a code the Japanese never cracked. This is the inner kernel of the script for WINDTALKERS.

Nicolas Cage plays Sgt. Joe Enders. He's already demonstrated his ability to follow orders. In the Solomon Islands campaign, his unit fought to the last man - Enders himself - to defend some piece of scummy swamp. After recovering from injuries, Joe is assigned as guardian to a newly enlisted Navajo, Pvt. Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach), who's a rookie radioman in a Marine recon outfit that's part of the assault on Saipan. Joe's orders are to protect the Navajo code "at all costs", which means, in effect, that Enders must be ready to kill Yahzee rather than allow the latter to be captured by the enemy.

Director John Woo has buried the nugget of a pretty good story in so many dead bodies and special effects that it's virtually lost to view. Woo must have been trying to outdo WE WERE SOLDIERS and BLACK HAWK DOWN in body count. Even when the beleaguered Marines discover they're almost out of ammo, they still manage to mow down the onrushing Japanese in scores. Joe Enders himself, suffering the guilt and rage from being the only survivor of his former Solomon Islands unit, is a one man killing machine seemingly capable of storming Tokyo single-handed. The hapless Ben finds himself put in harm's way as he's forced to trail along after his minder and watch the carnage. The combat action isn't even always plausible. At one point, a Marine infantry column in a valley is having the bejeezus kicked out of it by Japanese artillery entrenched on a ridgeline. Somewhere between the two, the last of our heroes' recon unit is scrambling to recover a radio - the last one on Earth apparently - with which an air strike can be called in to paste the bad guys. Are you telling me that the larger Marine detachment in the valley didn't have its own communications gear to call for help?

I'm awarding three generous stars to WINDTALKERS solely on the strength of Cage's gritty performance as the vengeance-obsessed Enders. And although Beach has extensive screen time as the naive Navajo who must become a warrior while under fire, he rarely serves as much more than a foil for Joe's wild-eyed blood lust. The battle sequences themselves are fairly good, though those in the other two films mentioned in this review are a cut above by far. Quantity doesn't necessarily equate with quality.

If anything, this film may inspire the viewer to do additional research on the role of the World War II Navajo code talkers. That, I guess, is something.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Windtalkers, 16 Feb 2003
By A Customer
I expected a great film considering the cast. However Nicolas Cage appears to be poorly cast. The special effects come across as special effects. There is a scene where naval ships are shelling the enemy and this looks as if it has been taken from wartime footage and spliced into the movie. This film is not what I expected it to be and a great disappointment. Compared to quality high budget war/action movies that are made today this is not one of them, sorry.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Dismal cliched rubbish...., 17 Mar 2003
By A Customer
Superb efforts like Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line and Band of Brothers have really raised the standards as far as war movies go. These productions are historically accurate, are well acted and have excellent special effects which are not overplayed.

This film fails to get anywhere near the mark. Wooden acting, major battle scenes that border on a comic production and a cliched American patriotism fuelled plot all add up to a major disappointment.

My advice? Avoid at all costs I'm afraid......

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars PLENTY OF WOO'S!!!
This is a great over the top action war movie with plenty of big bangs and a fine selection of machine guns that don't run out of bullets. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Jason Thorne

4.0 out of 5 stars STUPID REVIEWS
i have had this film for years and i thought it was a very good war film ,then i was reading these reviews and i could not believe the people giving it 1 star . Read more
Published 5 months ago by BUBS.

1.0 out of 5 stars Absurd; wrong; irrational; foolish; monstrously inaccurate historic movie
Perhaps this is is an action movie, not a war movie in the tradition of the realistic classics we've been lucky enough to have released in the last decade. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Brendan O. Clarke

4.0 out of 5 stars Windtalkers
I picked this DVD up dirt cheap and was pleasantly surprised. American WW11 films not normally my cup of tea but this is action packed and well acted without too much swearing... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Bryan Cloake

5.0 out of 5 stars Except for the 'naval ships clips' this movie is GOOD!!
This movie is very good, I highly recomend it to every one who likes warfare films. This has alot of action in it as well as friendship, a bit of love and romance. Read more
Published 11 months ago by DK.

5.0 out of 5 stars entertaining stuff
I saw this film on the television, & absolutely enjoyed it, great acting from nicolas cage, i was considering buying it untill i saw the reviews, maybe i should watch it again... Read more
Published 16 months ago by blu-boi

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't do it!
As a student of anthropology with a particular interest in Native American culture I was drawn to this film after I had visited the Navajo Nation Reserve in Arizona where they... Read more
Published 17 months ago by Michael Kilbride

4.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant!!!
Brilliant film, full of action that you need to have in a war film. But I have seen better war films such as Saving Private Ryan, Band Of Brothers, Enemy At The Gates, Black Hawk... Read more
Published 17 months ago by David Gareth Williams

5.0 out of 5 stars A great film !
I was reluctant to get this film because of the reviews on here, turns out theyre aload of BS!!
This is actually a very good film with a good story, great action sequences... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Tim Green

1.0 out of 5 stars oh... dear...
worst.

war movie.

ever.

SERIOUSLY, STAY AWAY FROM THIS TRAVESTY

buy platoon, everyone should own it

BUY PLATOON... Read more
Published 19 months ago by xdavex

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