With a budget said to be more than $100 million, "Definitely, Windtalkers will be the most spent on Oahu by a film company," said Walea Constantinau, Honolulu film liaison for the city and county (Honolulu Star Bulletin, June 7, 2000).

Woo was in Hawai‘i in May scouting film sites. Most scenes in the film are being shot on private and state property and military sites, sources told the Honolulu Star Bulletin.

The producers have rented a state-owned warehouse at Barber’s Point Harbor for parking and storage.

Most of the movie is being filmed at Ko‘olua Ranch.

Woo and his co-workers distinctively liked the island’s Munro Trail because it looks a lot like Saipan, which Hawai’i is depicting in the movie.

Starring Nicholas Cage and Adam Beach, the film portrays a unit of Navajo radiomen who used a derivative of their Native American language to encrypt radio messages in the Pacific Theater during World War II. The indecipherable code was credited with turning the tide of several key battles, including Iwo Jima.

In the plotline, U.S. Marines get the idea of using the Navajo language, so difficult that few non-Navajos speak it, as a code. Because of their importance, bodyguards were assigned to protect the code-talkers.

However, if the Navajos were ever in danger of being captured, the bodyguards’ job was to execute them so the code would be protected.

Cage plays a marine assigned to protect the Navajo Carl Yahzee, played by Beach. The story is about these men who don’t understand each other but who get to know each other and work together," Woo said. "It’s a story about friendship and honor."

"This is a very, very patriotic American film," said Tammy Smith, the extras casting director. "We see Japanese soldiers in battle, but the film is not about that. It’s about the relationship between a Marine and a Navajo."