I would definitely NOT recommend this movie for the faint-hearted. It is full of death and blood. This movie is about the Navajo code and it's role in WWII.
The movie begins with the battle of the Solomon Islands, where the main character, Joe Enders (Nicholas Cage) is near a bomb and ends up deaf in his left ear. He is then assigned a mission; to protect a Navajo Indian that knows the code. The code is in their language, but is still a code.. meaning it wouldn't make sense to a Native-Speaking Navajo that was unaware of the code. Like the code word for a fighter plane was the Navajo word for tortoise.
The two get off to a rough start. Indians were still discriminated against and even looked down upon in this time period. They become friends after a short amount of time. The whole movie is about the eventual takeover of Saipan, which must be a territory of Japan or another name for Japan. In one of the first battles, Ben (The Navajo Joe is protecting) is shot.. lucky for him the only loss suffered was the damage of his radio. He disguised himself as a Japanese soldier, since he was very recently told he could easily be mistaken for one when he had no uniform on. He pretends to take Joe prisoner in an attempt to get ahold of one of the enemy's radios. They succeed and, with the code, Ben tells naval ships the coordinates on which to attack.
The two undergo several journies with lots of blood, sweat, death, gunfire, bombs.. etc. Typical warfare, right? But, since Joe's job is to make sure that no Navajo is taken prisoner and allows the Japanese to crack the code, he kills one of Ben's very close friends, Whitehorse. (another code speaker) Ben then turns on Joe and develops a deep hatred for him. He attempts to kill him a couple times, and Joe tries hard to gain Ben's trust back. In Ben's anger, he goes on a rampage and kills a ton of Japanese soldiers, a task he could not finish beforehand.
The few ending scenes of this movie include Joe telling Ben that killing him could not bring his friends back.. Ben then fires back telling him that he wouldn't know what having friends is like. Joe then helps Ben dodge a bomb, and then Ben sees Joe's side and forgives him. They both get shot.. and then there is an extremely drawn-out slow motion scene where they both keep getting shot and Joe is carrying Ben back to a trench thing and it's very dramatic. Joe then dies in Ben's arms and Ben tells his son the legend of Joe Enders to pass on through the generations.
I thought it was a pretty okay movie. It was waaaay too many war scenes to keep my attention. I love war movies, but this one just seemed repetitive. It was, however, very informative of the Navajo code and how important it was that it be kept a secret. The code was never cracked apparently, so they must have done a pretty darn good job. If the code had been broken, the question would stand of whether or not we would have been able to win the war as efficiently, if even at all. I would only recommend watching this movie if you are completely clueless as to what the Navajo code is.
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