Reviews

Windtalkers (2002) is a World War II action flick with plenty of overdone action and not much of a story. At 2.25 hours in length, it overstayed its welcome by an hour or so for me.

The windtalkers referenced in the title are Navajo marine codetalkers dispatched to the Pacific theater during World War II. They were trained in a special code based on the Navajo language, and distributed among units in an attempt to provide coded radio transmissions that couldn't be understood by the Japanese. This was accomplished both by using the Navajo language and also using coding within that language to add a complication that the Japanese were never able to overcome during World War II.

Sounds like an interesting story, right? Maybe so, in another movie. The only real reason to include the codetalkers in this movie was to provide a focal point for a storyline about bigotry and personal biases among some of the troops. That's also a legitimate storyline for a movie, but it's been done many times before with other targets. The title seems to hint that this movie will go beyond that aspect, but it doesn't. Actually, even the storyline about bigotry doesn't matter much in this movie. Everything is just an excuse for action battle scenes.

This movie is all about the battle scenes, and it contains a lot of bad ones. I guess this is supposed to have been a modern, therefore realistically portrayed, Pacific Theater World War II movie. The photography and noise and gore are done with modern techniques, but not the story or scenes. All of the worst battle clichés of war movie history have been brought together and updated. Hand grenades, artillery shells, land mines, everything explodes with giant fuel-laden fireballs. There are slow motion sequences of soldiers successfully diving away from exploding artillery shells and fiery eruptions. There are enemies too stupid to recognize infiltrators of a different race and language.

And always, always, always, there is the crazy protagonist who goes nuts in every battle and charges headlong into the enemy fire unscathed as bodies are being torn apart on all sides of him. No marine-issue semi-automatic rifle for this guy-- as a Sergeant he has a sub-machine gun and indiscriminately sprays hundreds of pounds of rounds in all directions, never running out of ammunition. While in the middle of one heated battle he over-ran an enemy foxhole with a dead soldier at the bottom and stopped for a few seconds to spray a couple dozen bullets into the body while screaming triumphantly. Why not? His magic gun isn't going to run dry.

The movie is supposedly about the codetalkers, or at least about how the Navajo code was used, but that hardly gets addressed. The code is used in a couple instances when a non-code English transmission would have been fine, but when two American soldiers transmit from a Japanese radio at an over-run enemy post and might be expected to use code to provide verification, everything is done in open English. Of course, the Japanese radio also conveniently had Arabic numerals on the frequency tuner so they could change to the correct transmission frequency.

If you like this type of battle footage, I recommend that instead of devoting your time to watching the movie straight through you just drop in somewhere in the middle and watch a few minutes of battle. If you want more than a few minutes you can either continue with the movie or just keep re-watching the same few minutes you already saw. There won't be any difference.

It's not exactly a new formula, but a movie about a competent female burglar who has trouble staying more than one step ahead of the law has potential to be entertaining. Toss in some double-crossing along the way and some suspenseful scenes, and you'd think a good movie experience would be just about guaranteed. Not in this case, though.

The Spree has a mildly interesting plot due to a couple twists I think most people won't see coming very far ahead, but that isn't enough to make it a good movie. In fact, the movie isn't even average, it's outright bad. The dialogue is some of the worst I can recall from any movie, and Beals and Boothe add flat performances to what was already a poor script. There are multiple sex scenes but they're all boring and almost identical, and the obvious cuts from the nude body double to Beals' face are as laughable as her bemused expression in each encounter. There is also an extremely weak attempt to provide some background for Beals' character in the form of an odd side-plot involving her ill father, but it doesn't reveal anything relevant about either her character or her motivations.

If you're trying to decide between watching the Spree and any other movie, pick the other movie. Come to think of it, if you're trying to decide whether to watch the Spree or bang your head against the wall for an equivalent 98 minutes, you might want to give serious consideration to the wall.

In several places Marked For Murder is almost painful to watch. The script writing is trite, boring, cliché-ridden, and predictable. Even rookie soap opera actors can manage to create an occasional memorable moment when handed such cruddy material, but not anyone in this cast. By the midpoint of this movie I'd decided it must not be the fault of the actors. The probability of so many horrible actors all managing to get cast in the same shoot seems so low that I can only conclude they were all told to play their roles the way they did. The shoddy sets and poor editing indicate this movie had inept crews at every level, so the actors may well have been given bad direction.

Nothing else is handled any better. A car chase ends in one of the worst movie crashes ever filmed when a car misses a bridge and flies out into the air over the gulch the bridge spans. For a moment after the car goes airborne the scene cuts to a head-on closeup of the terrified driver taking his hands off the wheel to cover his head. Might as well take his hands off the wheel, right? They can't do anything when the car's in the air anyway, right? Except while he's being terrified at flying through the air, you can clearly see the road behind the car through the rear window and can tell this reaction shot is filmed on the ground. Not only that, you can actually see another car on the road behind the car that's supposed to be in midair! Then there's another quick cut to where the car is going to impact. It should be appearing from the right, coming down while still traveling right to left at high speed. Instead, the car plops down from almost straight above the river, and for a few frames you can even see the crane cables that have just released to allow the car to drop.

The ONLY redeeming feature in Marked For Murder is a couple of topless scenes, but even those weren't enough to bring this movie's rating up as far as a 2. Marked For Murder is one of those rare examples of when a rating scale going to 10 is needed, so the 1 this movie earns properly distinguishes it from merely bad movies that might merit a 2 or 3.

Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady was an enjoyable movie, and I thought it was well made. I haven't seen many Sherlock Holmes productions and I'm not really familiar with the specifics of the original stories or the history of the character, so I can't say how well this movie stands up as a Sherlock Holmes production. However, considered by itself as an individual movie it's definitely worth viewing.

I'm not generally a fan of movies produced for television, but Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady didn't suffer from the problems common to most TV productions. Sets and costumes were numerous and elaborate, and the sound was full, unlike many TV productions with flat sound that is clearly from a set. The plot was well laid out and easily followed, unlike the second production in this series (Incident at Victoria Falls), which I think is a bit convoluted and confusing. One small warning-- this movie was apparently originally broadcast in segments as a small mini-series, and the total run-time is about 3 hours. You'll need to set aside some time if you plan to watch it all in one go.

Patrick Macnee was fun as Watson, and Christopher Lee plays a convincing Holmes. Morgan Fairchild seemed to be a good fit as the Leading Lady, though there were a couple singing scenes with poor lip-syncing, which might be partially her fault but could also be attributed to the editor and director. The cast is quite large for a television production, with lots of secondary and minor characters, and good performances throughout the movie.

Overall, Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady is a nice period piece and I enjoyed watching it.