Movie review time, and this could take a minute or two...

Windtalkers - stars Nicholas Cage, who still thinks he's leaving Las Vegas for fuck's sake!

I was going to say can you imagine if Kubrick got his hands on a war script...but he did actually and it wasn't bad. Full Metal Jacket is a classic for those that haven't seen it. Windwankers is just that, a massive, huge, in fact most probably enjoyable (bar the over zealous chaffing), WANK! Five minutes in and I'm getting Last Castle flash backs, I'm expecting Robert Wrinkles to pop up at any moment and make everyone else act like mentally challenged people.

The opening battle scene is truly truly laughable, I mean I can't describe to you how bad this really is. You know those "Face Off" slow-mo cuts during the action when someone dives or spins around all guns blazing, well they've tried to emulate that but in war, and not only does it NOT work, it doesn't even...I've convinced myself this is some preview of a B-grade flick that was remastered from years ago and they've pulled out of the vaults. I mean you could see the actors intentionally tripping over and shit, I felt like I was watching rehearsals.

Let me rewind you to why we went to see this, we're sitting there eating Kingsley's (Stacey's first taste of the Berra's very own) and musing over which movie to see. I want to see the new hack'n'slash "Road Kill", I reckon it looks funky, Stacey's seen just about everything but agrees that that looks good. Then a preview for Windstrokers comes on, and guess who's directing? Yup, John Woo, I'm thinkin' "yeah baby, I gotta see this, John Woo and war, that's gonna rock!"

Fast forward again to ten minutes into the flick and I'm looking at my watch, wishing I hadn't eaten all my burger rings and sussing out the crowd for a make-out session...yeah anyway, so its pretty boring. For the parts I've paid attention to, I can't believe they looked at this after they cut it and went "yeah, this'll make us a bundle, quality stuff", its not, its SHIIIIIT. Its appauling, its so bad that I'm wondering who spent the money to make this, and why noone was paying any attention while it was actually being filmed. Its like watching primary school kids pretend to be trees on stage, fucking hopeless.

Back to John Woo for a tic, love it or hate it, Face Off is a brilliant movie in every aspect, Broken Arrow is ok, as is Hard Target (forgiving the fact that they cast Jean Claude Van Dung), but nothing to predict that this was going to flop so bad you'd think he was an advocate for impedence.

Storyline, where to start. Well, from what I can gather, the movie is about a new code that was implemented during World War II that the Japanese couldn't crack. This is based on a true story by the way. The code was based around the Najavo's native language and was a raving success...in real life that is. So get this, you know how laughable this movie really is? During a couple of the battle scenes, they're desperate to get to a radio caus' theirs got shot out right, so they pull off this huge maneuvre to get into a Japanese strong hold, get on the radio, AND SPEAK ENGLISH! I mean...oh and then there's Nicholas' character who is supposed to "protect the code" - ok that just means that if there's a chance that the radio guy (Ben) looks like falling into enemy's hands, he has to pop a cap in his ass - well he spends the whole movie with a strained look on his face and feeling sorry for himself and everyone around him. And then they try and get some sub-plots going with, you know, the stereo-typical redneck racist guy who taunts the Najavo Marines, then has his ass saved by one of them and now he loves them. Ok the only thing that this reminded me of, and we're talking right down to the music just about, is the American day-time soaps. Yep, that's about as good as it gets, unbelievable.

I was so curious to see what others thought about this, I went to my two favourite sites, imdb.com and mrcranky.com. Me and Mr Cranky haven't been seeing eye to eye of late so I was more interested in his impression. Here's what he had to summarise: "We cheer at the end of "Windtalkers" not because we know the good guys win World War II or because Native Americans contributed to the victory and finally somebody knows about it, but because the film's ceaseless moral cheerleading is finally over." Over at IMDB however, its a different tune, and I'm not even going to give that the time of day.

I'm giving this zero, and I pray none of you have this inflicted upon you. Actually it'd be a good experiment in self loathing - could you make yourself sit through any more of this...you get the picture.

BH