In 1942, several hundred Navajo Americans were recruited as Marines and trained to use their language as code. Marine Joe Enders (Nicolas Cage) is assigned to protect Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach). Enders' orders are to protect his code talker, 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? The Navajo code was the only one never broken by the Japanese, and is considered to have been key in winning the war.

Windtalkers really wants to be to World War II Navajo American soldiers what the brilliant 1989 drama Glory was to the African-American troops who served in the Civil War. Director John Woo even has James Horner, music composer on Glory, on board for soundtrack duties here. While the films share two things in common: Horner and problematic approach to the narrative (the story of minority characters is told via a Caucasian soldier), that is where the similarities end. Glory is not only a fitting tribute to those who served, but it is also one of the finest war films ever made. Windtalkers, on the other hand, is a melodramatic, clichéd bag of wind that squanders a subject matter equally worthy of long-overdue respect.

John Woo has never been known for a subtle approach in his films be it good (Face/Off, The Killer, Bullet In The Head), bad (Broken Arrow) or otherwise (Mission Impossible 2), and his directing on this film is no exception. If there is a cliché for Woo and screenwriters John Rice and Joe Batteer to use from the World War II film cookbook, they use it. The characters on screen aren't really people, they're stale stereotypes. The dialogue fares no better. It's as flat as an ironing board.

Nicolas Cage, after last year's laughable Captain Corelli's Mandolin, should learn to stay away from World War II films. Here, the ol' Rage in the Cage seems to have gotten his character motivation mixed up. Enders is supposed to be a shell-shocked soldier. Instead, Cage plays him as if he just walked off the set of Resident Evil: a zombie. I guess we can take some solace in the fact that he didn't try an offensive accent in this film like he did in Mandolin.

Adam Beach manages to rise above his thinly written character and turn in a decent performance (given what he had to work with, you could say he turned in a great performance). Christian Slater is merely okay but his character really doesn't amount to much, while Mark Ruffalo, Noah Emmerich (as members of Enders' squad) and Frances O'Connor (as the token female) are largely wasted in supporting roles. Oh, and if someone can tell me what type of accent Peter Stormare was aiming for, I'll recommend you for a code talkers job with today's army.

With the majority of the production hitting the skids big time, I looked toward the one thing you can usually count on in a John Woo production - the action. As we all know by now, Woo is one of the cinema world's true artists when it comes to action sequences and gunplay. Even here though, Woo is flying below the radar. The battle sequences are uninvolving, badly staged and not very well photographed. To make matters worse, some very old and worn stock footage from World War II is inserted during a battle scene full of digital effects! Following the stunning recreation of battleships in last year's Pearl Harbor, you have to wonder what Woo was thinking when he decided on doing this.

The valour of the Navajo code breakers and fellow Native American soldiers who served our country during World War II is a subject that deserves all the respect and admiration we can give both it and them. A melodramatic mess like Windtalkers is not the way to go about showing it.

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