A disappointing feature from John Woo; he takes the intriguing second world war history of US Navajo servicemen, whose language was used as unbreakable military code, and turns it into a merely competent action war pic, boasting neither Woo's trademark balletic violent set-pieces nor any convincing insight into the tensions between the native Americans and their Anglo-Saxon commanders in the Marine Corps.
Nicolas Cage gives another of his horse-faced, horse-brained turns as the regular guy who goes into battle with his Navajo code-talker Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach), having secretly undertaken to kill Ben rather than let him be captured and reveal the secrets of the code under torture. It's not quite as dumb as Mel Gibson's recent shameful Vietnam pic We Were Soldiers, though there are similarities.
There is much touchy-feely PC new age respect due to the Navajo, though the Japanese enemy are apparently just slant-eyed filth ripe for getting shot to hell.
