Native Americans, we like to believe, live at one with the universe, serenely attuned to the ebb and flow of natural forces. The culture of the U.S. Marine Corps is quite the opposite--gung-ho machismo in full cry. Yet in World War II, the latter had a desperate need for the former, specifically for an unbreakable code, based on the Navajo language, which could be openly spoken on the radio in combat. Windtalkers is a (heavily) fictionalized account of this coupling.
John Woo's film concentrates on a non-com, Joe Enders (Nicolas Cage), a Marine ordered to guard one of the code talkers,...