Windtalkers

Whatever its faults — and there are a number of them — John Woo's spectacularly violent war movie sheds some light on the crucial contribution Navajo-Americans made to the WWII effort. The year is 1943, and in a remote part of Arizona, a young Native American man boards a bus for Camp Pendleton, Calif. His name is Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach), and he's one of several hundred Navajo men recruited by the Marine Corps to serve as "codetalkers," radio operators trained to relay highly sensitive information in their native tongue. Since the unwritten Navajo language is virtually unknown to anyone born outside the tribe, Japanese interceptors have little chance of cra...