mrchri5

I just finished watching saving private ryan and I think its a good movie. This movie gets a lot of very good reveiws and seems to be a must own on a lot of peoples dvd list. I think a lot of the hype about this movie comes from all the death and destruction brought to people on a believable level. Maybe im strange but I didn't find the story in the movie as well done as windtalkers. I acually like windtalkers better even though the reviews weren't as good. which do you think is the better movie?

Chris

Amadeus

Saving Private Ryan is easily the better movie IMO.Windtalkers was good,but nowhere near as good as SPR.The battle sequences in SPR were much better than those in windtalkers,and the acting was also great.But that's my op.

CrazeeDonkee

I didn't like Windtalkers. It felt like they just threw together random war scenes. Maybe I wasn't paying enough attention or I was distracted... but it felt that they had no objective, just run around randomly killing people.

Heat

I didn't care for Windtalkers either. There were some decent battle scenes, but it seems that they tossed in the Navajo code talking as the plot almost as an afterthought.

If you liked Saving Private Ryan, be sure to watch the Band of Brothers series.

THORN

windtalkers was a great movie ..... while i feel SPR was a far superior film than Windtalkers, i felt that the underlying story in windtalkers was more interesting

WW2 in europe has been done many many times ..... as has WW2 in the pacific, but NEVER has any film consentrated on the native americans who helped up prevail over japan

i find it amazing that this group of people were largely resopncible for our victory over thet japaneese, yet these are the same people who WE, as americans, have shat upon time after time. stealing thier land, killing their people, and exposing them to disease and suffering. it was reminicent to me of the few black regements who served unedr the union flag durring the civil war. Where men who were not even considered whole persons rose-up together to defend this great country and fight to preserve their freedom


in the end ....SPR is a better film for its acting and cinematography but i like the story of widtalkers better

HistoryProf

I agree with all of your points completely...the problem is that they chose Woo for Windtalkers and decided to focus on Cage instead of the codetalkers themselves....I felt that there was a great movie waiting to be made on this, and they completely blew it with both direction and casting. A total and utter disappointment for me....and that's sad - very sad.

That said...SPR was simply a very very good film, and wasn't trying to be anything other than what it was...Windtalkers can't even touch it. It should have been a film about the codetalkers...instead it was just another very mediocre war film that relegates the codetalkers to a backstory in favor of focusing on the 'conflicted' Nicholas Cage how very uncompelling

Heat

Um... the indians were very good fighters, but they lost due to the sheer number of Europeans crossing what had been their land. To the victor goes the spoils.

That being said, the Navajo code talkers were very valuable assetts in the Pacific and I was looking forward to this movie since I was familiar with their story. Too bad it wasn't a movie about the Navajo code talkers, it was a weak war movie with the windtalkers as a back plot.

I would like to see their story redone by a different director, with a different script.

SFranke

What does defeating Indians in battle during European expansion have to do with the lack of awareness concerning the Navajo windtalkers? The two groups might be related by blood, but they are not the same people. And the whole Civil War was about ending slavery (it was, not Lincoln's election or any of that crap). I would hope that the very people whose freedom was at stake would fight for it. Honorable, yes, but a soldier's race does not make one more worthy of more commendation than another soldier. As for not being considered 'whole persons', that depended on which side of the Mason-Dixon you were standing.

I liked Saving Private Ryan, too. However, it did nothing to dispel my firm belief that Tom Hanks is a robot in human flesh.

Geofferson

Saving Private Ryan =
Windtalkers =

IMO, of course.

joeydaninja

I liked Windtalkers much more than Saving Private Ryan.

I found Saving Private Ryan, pretentious, in my opinion.

I found Windtalkers, a straight forward action movie, with zero plot. I know people do not like this defense, but i found the visuals of this movie to be breathtaking, from the opening storming of the beach with battleships, to every battle that took place after and before. i feel a well choreographed movie can be just as stimulating as any intelligent plot. if you combine both, it would be great. but it's not always necessary.

Go John Woo!

stevearino

I really hate to get this off topic so I will throw in that SPR was a better movie. There are many reasons why, but I need to address something that was posted because it really isn't true and I wish more people knew about their American history.
The Civil War was not about ending slavery. If anything, the slavery issue was the very last concern. The government at the time would want you to believe that so they wouldn't be seen more or less as dictators by trying to keep the southern states 'in line' with what they wanted the rest of the nation to do. First and foremost, it was about the south ceceding from the Union. They did not want a bunch of Yankee beauracrats to set laws upon them to tell them how they should live, who they should pay taxes to etc. They wanted their own government plain and simple. Nothing more nothing less. Growing pains of a fairly new Anglo nation.
That's all, carry on!

joeydaninja

but a good effect was slavery was ended

flixtime

IMO: Though Saving Private Ryan is a measurably better film than Windtalkers, they are not as far apart on my personal ratings scale as they might be on most others. Aside from the opening battle scene, I didn't find anything exceptional/unique about Saving Private Ryan versus many other classic war films. As far as Windtalkers, I too wish there was more focus on the Navajo characters; I also thought the battle scenes were overdone and at times suffered from "the enemy can't shoot straight" syndrome, but all-in-all I felt that Windtalkers fits in nicely with many of the 1940's/1950's war films produced by Hollywood.

You beat me to it! Long story short: I tried explaining that once in college to my English Comp. class (the Professor included!) and their consensus - only after an unsuccessful search on their part for tar, feathers, and a wood post - was that I'd didn't know what I was talking about (can't wait until the day I hear that WWII was about saving the followers of Judaism). Anyway.....................
Welcome aboard stevearino!

Regards,
flixtime (unofficial proponent of home-schooling )

Indy Jones Fan

Another misconception about the South and their slaves was the whole 3/5's of a man label put on the black men. This was actually done by the congress not to diminish their worth or value as human beings but to reduce the southern states representation in the House of Representitives. The South, who up until then, had never given slaves any credit as men (and women) before were now talking of seceding from the union and suddenly wanted to count slaves as general population thus giving the Southern states more representitves and more voting power in Washington. In order to prevent this Congress said the black man could only be counted as 3/5's of a man which reduced the South's power. It was actually a good thing, not bad.

Saving Private Ryan is a much better film in my opinion. I felt more connected to the characters and felt for each one of them. The characters in Windtalkers seemed very 2 dimensional.

stevearino

Thanks for the welcome! Really, I'm not a troublemaker, I just hate it when it appears that schools are still telling the same lie.
I know what it's like make a presentation to a class where the prof is too subjective. Ran into that problem in Macroeconomics. Needless to say, the prof was fired after that semester. Don't know if it was a direct result from my situation, but it sure did coincide pretty well. LOL

mrchri5

I'm going to look into some other movies like apocolypse now and hamburger hill. I've heard they are much better. I also remember seeing full metal jacket a long time ago and thought it was a better movie than SPR or windtalkers. I can't think of the movie right now but its a story about 2 snipers and it has a scene just like in SPR where the guy gets shot through the scope. anyone know what movie im talking about? did they just copy from it?

Chris

ipkevin

You're thinking of Enemy at the Gates with Ed Harris and Jude "I'm not a girl despite the name and the looks" Law.