The energy and conviction of the action sequences don't quite compensate for Windtalkers' emotional cliches and historical heedlessness. full review

A powerful premise turned into a stubbornly flat, derivative war movie. full review

The history is fascinating; the action is dazzling. They just don't work in concert. full review

It's the best new battle film since Black Hawk Down. full review

A relentless, bombastic and ultimately empty World War II action flick. full review

I kept wishing I was watching a documentary about the wartime Navajos and what they accomplished instead of all this specious Hollywood hoo-ha. full review

No amount of burning, blasting, stabbing, and shooting can hide a weak script. full review

The screenplay sabotages the movie's strengths at almost every juncture. All the characters are stereotypes, and their interaction is numbingly predictable. full review

Windtalkers' remains almost obstinately flat.

Feels slightly off-key, out of focus.

Although too simplistic, overly melodramatic and psychologically underdeveloped to be a great movie, Windtalkers is a perfectly good one. full review

Despite some feints in a soulful direction, the picture has none of the interior quality of a multifaceted war film like Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line. full review

Windtalkers is shapelessly gratifying, the kind of movie that invites you to pick apart its faults even as you have to admit that somehow it hit you where you live. full review

One thing that should be taught in Film Criticism 101 is that a fascinating subject does not necessarily guarantee a fascinating movie -- and the new film Windtalkers would be an excellent case in point. full review

[Woo] doesn't reinvent the war film with Windtalkers. But he does capitalize on the post-Private Ryan trend toward showing combat at its most brutal and personal.

You might need a decoder of your own to figure out what went awry with Windtalkers. full review

The script is riddled with so many cliches, you count on the battle scenes to wake you from your stupor. full review

Woo makes Windtalkers his own by combining the style and concerns of his earlier work with retro-sounding music and other war-movie conventions. full review

Directed without the expected flair or imagination by Hong Kong master John Woo, Windtalkers airs just about every cliche in the war movie compendium across its indulgent two-hour-and-fifteen-minute length. full review

The only time Windtalkers doesn't go by the book is when Woo feels compelled to remind in-the-know moviegoers that he's John Woo: birds artfully flapping their wings, grass swaying, blood spurting, Joe staring soulfully into his personal abyss. full review