While this possesses all the usual trapping of a John Woo movie - gun-toting men flying through the air, birds in slow-motion - here they are, of necessity, twisted slightly. For example, the gun-toters are usually propelled that way by large explosions - I have to say there were a lot of people getting impressively close to very big pyrotechnics. And rather than doves, the birds were pelicans (I think - ornithology has never been my strong point). However, we still get the pointing of guns at point-blank range, and no significant female roles to speak of, so it's business as usual.
Cage plays a Marine, baby-sitting a Navajo radio-operator (Beach), whose language is being used as an unbreakable code. His instructions are to kill his charge rather than let him be captured; inevitably, of course, the two bond making these orders harder to follow. The relationships are nicely handled, but this is a war film. And in case you didn't notice, Woo insists on reminding us of this with frequent, lengthy battle-sequences which, while well-staged, are largely without point or purpose. It gets very numbing and is pretty predictable too - you know when people start talking about what they want to do after the war, that it's just a question of time...
C-
