War - man's ultimate inhumanity to man - can throw up some pretty horrific things - but somehow none are quite as grim as a duet between an Indian Navajo flautist and Christian Slater on harmonica.

Once you have heard Christian and his chum Charlie Whitehorse (Willie) making sweet music, nothing in the Pacific theatre of war seems quite so bad.

Slater plays Ox Anderson, an American army sergeant charged with looking after Whitehorse, whose expertise in the Navajo code is crucial to the advance against Japan in World War II.

The military code itself is based on the Indian's native language, a complex tongue that proved completely resistant to Japanese code-breaking attempts.

Along with Ox, Marine Sergeant Joe Enders (Cage) is watching over a second Navajo Ben Yahzee (Beach), who comes up with lines like "It's my war too - I'm fighting for my land, my family."

All very strange coming from a race who had been systematically wiped out by the forefathers of the very same people they are now fighting alongside.

Anyway, what the two 'windtalkers' don't know is that Ox and Joe have been ordered to murder their Navajo charges if there is any chance of them falling into enemy hands.

Bearing in mind that they're just about to launch the turn-point assault on the Japanese island of Saipan in 1944, Charlie and Ben couldn't realistically expect to see Christmas.

There is a terrific story waiting to be told here but Woo - a director pretty much unsurpassed in the action movie stakes - is not the man to tell it.

For the bulk of the movie's two hours plus running time, we get nothing more than a series of competently executed battle scenes featuring Cage wiping out row upon row of enemy soldiers.

The Japanese themselves are demonised as little more than fanatic cannon fodder and there is no attempt to explore their perception of the Navajo threat.

The final insult is that there exists no record that GIs were ordered to kill their Navajo radio men - an unnecessary invention breathtaking in its arrogance.

Tim Evans