In theaters

WINDTALKERS, directed by John Woo, written by John Rice and Joe Batteer, 134 minutes, rated R.

At its core, the World War II movie “Windtalkers” is about Navajo code talkers, American Indian servicemen who used their language to confound the Japanese while transmitting sensitive information by radio.

It’s an important, overlooked piece of history that deserves to be explored in a movie – and it still does, hopefully soon in a film that will, at the very least, have a genuine interest in the subject.

“Windtalkers” doesn’t.

The film, from a script by John Rice and Joe Batteer, fails to fully realize its premise, which is overlooked in favor of those elements that tend to beef up Hollywood’s bottom line – exploding land mines, fiercely staged battles, mangled bodies and assorted other disfigurements, such as Nicolas Cage’s ear, which, after his character is nearly blown apart in the well-conceived opening battle, comes to look like a waxworks reject from Madame Tussaud’s museum.

Directed by Hong Kong’s John Woo, whose more popular films include “Face/Off” and “Mission Impossible II,” “Windtalkers” suggests Woo’s own knowledge of World War II wasn’t mined from hard research, but from the movies.

Its graphic violence aside, the film is a throwback and a relic, generating rote rhythms and easy cliches without spinning a single surprise or offering a believable character.

Mirroring “Pearl Harbor,” the film’s dialogue, in particular, is sandbagged with corny sentiment and delivered by a handful of actors whose performances suggest they’d be better off shucking

cheese at Hickory Farms than in a film whose $100 million budget apparently wasn’t enough to buy a decent script.

In a bombshell, the film’s premise goes like this: After surviving a horrific battle in the Solomon Islands, Cage’s Sgt. Joe Enders convinces his superiors that he’s fit for duty in spite of having a ruined ear and a perforated eardrum. In no time, he’s dizzy on the front lines of Saipan, where his mission is to protect Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach), a Navajo code talker – or wind talker – who is crucial to the war effort.

All of this is well and good, but Woo, who is better known for his finesse with orchestrating action scenes than his ability to create a coherent story, glosses over all of it in favor of blowing things up and firing off endless rounds of ammo.

To his credit, some of the battle sequences pack a wallop, but they never end. Worse, by the time Christian Slater shows up as Ox, a grinning, harmonica-playing sergeant who makes stirring music with one of the Navajos, you can’t help thinking, “When did Christian Slater get sprung out of jail? And how in hell did he learn to play that harmonica?”

It hardly matters. At that point, “Windtalkers” already has blown itself into the line of its own fire.

Grade: D+

On video and DVD

GOSFORD PARK, directed by Robert Altman, written by Julian Fellowes, 137 minutes, rated R.

Robert Altman’s “Gosford Park” is at once a murder mystery and a social satire, a movie whose story unfolds with the staccato punch of a blizzard of tiny melodramas, most of which have little to do with the unwieldy plot – but all of which add nicely to the experience of watching the film.

The story, a leisurely interweaving of the “Upstairs, Downstairs” classes in an English manor house in 1932, is centered around a shooting party held at Gosford Park, the sturdy country estate owned by Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon) and his younger wife, Lady Sylvia (Kristin Scott Thomas), a chilly aristocrat whose icy detachment suggests she’d either freeze if she paused long enough for her blue blood to congeal – or that she is, in fact, already dead.

Arriving for the McCordles’ party is a whole host of types, none more memorable than Maggie Smith’s show-stopping performance as the acid-tongued Constance, Countess of Trentham. Others come and go through the film’s busy corridors, but no group resonates more than the servants living downstairs – those who have been charged with orchestrating this hellish party while somehow putting up with the glamorous archetypes “bored to sobs” with its proceedings.

Without its murder – and Maggie Smith’s supremely bitchy asides – “Gosford Park” would have been just a charming museum piece set in the days before Hitler’s reign, a quaint slog through the English countryside with characters dusted off from a Merchant-Ivory production.

But Altman goes deeper. What interests him is the inner workings of the caste system, which he shakes up and captures through this murder. Indeed, the moment the victim is found slumped over a desk, the film’s several loose ends start to gel as truths are revealed, characters are exposed – and then catharsis, long dormant within these rigid walls, is allowed to unravel within one man’s bedroom.

Grade: B+

Christopher Smith’s reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, occasionally on E! Entertainment’s “E! News Weekend,” Tuesdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5” and Thursdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5:30” on WLBZ-2 and WCSH-6. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.

The Video/Dvd Corner

Renting a video or a DVD? NEWS film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores.

A Beautiful Mind ? B

Gosford Park ? B+

I Am Sam ? C

The Majestic ? D-

Max Keeble’s Big Move ? B

Orange County ? C-

The Shipping News ? C

Rollerball ? F

Black Hawk Down ? B

Kate & Leopold ? C+

Monster’s Ball ? A

The Mothman Prophecies ? C

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s

Stone ? B 3/4

Sidewalks of New York ? B-

Lantana ? A

Vanilla Sky ? B+

Corky Romano ? D-

From Hell ? C

The Others ? B+

Snow Dogs ? B-

Ocean’s Eleven ? B

Waking Life ? A

Ali ? B+

Not Another Teen Movie ? C-

Behind Enemy Lines ? C-

No Man’s Land ? A

Black Knight ? F

The Deep End ? A

Domestic Disturbance ? C

The Man Who Wasn’t There ?

B+

Mulholland Drive ? A

Spy Game ? C+

Bandits ? D

13 Ghosts ? F

Donnie Darko ? B

K-Pax ? B-

Life as a House ? C

Original Sin ? F

Our Lady of the Assassins ? B+

Riding in Cars with Boys ? B-

Training Day ? B-

Heist ? B+

Joy Ride ? B+

Zoolander ? C-

A.I. ? B-

The Last Castle ? C-

Sexy Beast ? B+

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

? F

The Musketeer ? D-

The Taste of Others ? A-

Don’t Say a Word ? C-

Hardball ? C+

O ? B+