Great Writer,James McBride,MIRACLE OF ST. ANNA

Published: 2003; Number of pages: 320
Dialectic Journal: 82 pages, 35,283 words, visuals

Movie: Spike Lee, 208 pages, 2008 premier
Running Time: 2 hours, 40 minutes

Hollywood War, Revised Edition
 “Miracle at St. Anna,” directed by Spike Lee and based on a novel by James McBride, who wrote the screenplay, exists in part to make the obvious, overdue point that men like Hector (Laz Alonso) Latino and in particular African-American soldiers fought as bravely and as hard as the characters in those Hollywood combat epics. But setting the record straight after so many years and so many movies is not necessarily a simple undertaking, and this film sometimes stumbles under its heavy, self-imposed burden of historical significance.
Like the French director Rachid Bouchareb, whose “Days of Glory” followed Arab soldiers fighting for France against the Nazis, Mr. Lee sticks to the sturdy conventions of the infantry movie, adapting old-fashioned techniques to an unfamiliar, neglected story. And the cinematic traditionalism of “Miracle at St. Anna” is perhaps its most satisfying trait. At its best, this is a platoon picture, and if it’s not exactly like the ones Hollywood made in the late ’50s and early ’60s, that’s part of Mr. Lee’s argument: it’s the movie someone should have had the guts or the vision to make back then. Better late than never.