LOS ANGELES -- John Woo has taken one of the more obscure and almost forgotten stories of World War II and brought it to life on the big screen in "Windtalkers."

In the story, Marines, Joe Enders (Nicholas Cage) and Ox Anderson (Christian Slater), are assigned to protect code talkers, Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach) and Charlie Whitehorse (Roger Willie). Their orders are to keep these men safe, but if a code talker should fall into enemy hands, they're to "protect the code at all costs."

As the men become reluctant friends and the bonds of war are forged, each man is ultimately faced with a terrible decision: if they can't protect their fellow Marines, how far will they go to protect the code?

You will see action scenes similar to those in "Saving Private Ryan" and "Pearl Harbor," but you will also feel the drama shown in Woo's earlier movie "Face Off" as you sit on the edge of your chair through the intense 134 minutes.

This movie has it all, and it takes you on a rollercoaster ride of emotion and action and amazingly enough it even has several moments of comedy.

The movie takes place during the invasion of Saipan and is historically correct down to the smallest detail. Woo's intent was to recreate the brutality of Saipan on film and I think he accomplished just that.

"I think it ("Windtalkers") paints an accurate portrait of what it must have been like," Nicolas Cage explained during an on-camera interview. "I can only imagine what it was like, having been on the field pretending to be one of these guys, and of course it had to be a billion times worse."

Prior to filming, a group of actors and key extras were sent through a two-week bootcamp run by Marines of Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii. Marines, both active and retired, assisted on this project and made sure the actors understood how Marines work as a team to accomplish the mission.

"It will be interesting to see how today's Marines react to the film, but I can assure them that virtually every element from the haircuts to weapons presentation is accurate for that time period," explained Capt. Matthew Morgan, DoD project officer for 'Windtalkers.'" "We made sure that vocabulary, uniforms, deuce gear and tactics were researched thoroughly, and that filming adhered as closely as possible to those facts."

"I thought I'll just show up for the movie - no big deal and I'll put on the clothes, but there's so much information - These Marines are pretty amazing," Christian Slater said upon completion of the training.

As a viewer, one should remember that "Windtalkers" is a story of men at war, and not a documentary.

The story premise involves code talkers being assigned a "Marine bodyguard," a theory revisited several times throughout the movie.

While this makes for a great Hollywood story, it has not been proven that Marines were ordered to kill their Navajo counterpart before allowing the Japanese to figure out the code. More accurately, the communications specialists operated radios in two-man teams with the second Marine cranking the hand generator to power the radios.

Through the years the concept of the "bodyguard" has grown into a military urban legend of sorts.

It may seem a little sensationalized because of the hundreds of rounds whizzing by Cage without him getting hit, but who's to say it couldn't - or more importantly didn't - happen. Have you ever read through some of the Medal of Honor citations that weren't awarded posthumously?

Anyone who has sat down with his or her grandparents and heard the stories or flipped through some WWII pictures might get a lump in their throat at times throughout this epic, but I think it's an important chapter of our history being told in a way that only John Woo can recreate on film.

This movie is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for "pervasive graphic war violence, and for language". It opened in theaters June 14.