WINDTALKERS (2002)

Finally, John Woo got to direct a movie in which hundreds, nay, thousands of men point guns at each other! There's also lots of Woo's trademark ham-fisted male bonding, as Nicolas Cage's grizzled Marine learns to love (the in-the-trenches variety, naturally) the Navajo linguist (a poignantly earnest Adam Beach) he's assigned to protect -- and if necessary, eliminate. That Native Americans played such a vital role in the Allied victory in WWII is as interesting a racio-historical nugget as the black experience in the Civil War. But this is no ''Glory''; Woo is too interested in the overorchestration of both emotion and explosion to give the drama the air it needs.