Continued ...
June 14, 2002

WINDTALKERS:  Perhaps this is the weekend for disastrously playing against character.  In this case, it’s John Woo.   Some hate his work.  Some love it.  I would characterize myself as a fan.  I like the melodrama.  I’m fine with the doves.  I love the good/evil conflict that is central to pretty much all of his movies. 

But Windtalkers has none of this.  Not really.  The set-up, aggressively given away in the ads, is that Nic Cage’s character is split between his duty as a soldier and his budding relationship with the code talker that he is assigned to protect, but whom he will have to kill if there’s a real threat of the bad guys catching him.  Then, I guess, they were going for a dichotomy between the spirituality of the American Indians and being instruments of war.  But it just doesn’t take.

There are basic directing problems.  If you’ve ever watch Woo, you’ll notice that he does everything in pairs, whether it be cars racing down the road or gun fights or conversations.  He is very specific about duality, splitting your focus between only two centers, even if there are more people also in the frame.  Here, he has to deal with visual chaos.  And he doesn’t do a good job of it. 

But similar problems, keeping focus on the story, can be found in the screenplay.  Is Windtalkers a simple war movie or is it about these heroes that we’ve never heard about.  The movie never seems to be able to make up its mind.  For example, this movie about the men who use a code that is sooooo critical, use the code only twice in the movie… both times to report enemy positions.  Does is matter if the enemy figures out where they are?  The one time something is transmitted that gives up information about where the Americans are, the message isn’t coded, but shouted in absolute clarity.

I’d write more, but for technical reasons (my webmaster is traveling), I need to get this in right now, before I head to screenings and she heads to a plane.

Suffice it to say, Windtalkers is one of the biggest disappointments of this or any year. 

THE BOURNE IDENTITY:  To read what I wrote about the film more than a month ago, click here.

READER OF THE DAY:  The EW Defense Minister writes:  “Your reader Raj's Tag Line is being overly conspiratorial in suggesting that Entertainment Weekly and EW.com purposely buried a negative "Scooby-Doo" review to please our corporate masters at AOL Time Warner. In fact, we posted Lisa Schwarzbaum's C-minus review on EW.com on Thursday, as soon as she submitted it.

It would have been nice to be able to publish the review in this week's magazine, to go along with our Sarah and Freddie cover story, but it wasn't screened in time. Blame the delay on Warner Bros., which has its own agenda independent of ours -- so much for all that vaunted synergy.”

And this from Sea of Dave:  “About franchises that need a big screen, you have to start with Xena.  Sword-swinging and medieval-type badasses are major again, and the girl-girl (girl, girl, girl) action will just amplify everything.  Attach trailers to LOTR and this will be huge.  Then there's Time Tunnel; I remember only that it was a '60s series with white jumpsuits and multiracial Trek-types untangling the snarls of history around the universe, and a really cool device for time travel.  It's ready-made - just update it with young hotties and snazzy FX, and the story possibilities are endless.  My tone may be tongue-in-cheeky, and I have no idea if any of these will work, but I'd pay to see them if they were done 'right'.”

E ME:  Tell me all about your weekend.