Miracle at St Anna [Blu-ray]

Thriller, Crime, Action

Derek Luke	2nd Staff Sergeant Aubrey Stamps
Michael Ealy	Sergeant Bishop Cummings
Laz Alonso	Corporal Hector Negron
Omar Benson Miller	Private First Class Sam Train
Pierfrancesco Favino	Peppi Grotta
Valentina Cervi	Renata
Matteo Sciabordi	Angelo Torancelli
John Turturro	Detective Antonio Ricci
Joseph Gordon-Levitt	Tim Boyle
John Leguizamo	Enrico

Director	Spike Lee
Producer	Jon Kilik; Spike Lee
Writer	James McBride

Every major American filmmaker has a war movie inside them. After the twin triumphs of When the Levees Broke and Inside Man, his biggest box office hit, Spike Lee puts his distinctive stamp on World War II. Though Miracle at St. Anna begins and ends in 1983, most of the action takes place in 1944. The segregation of the time leads to the Army's African-American 92nd Infantry Division. In Italy, four of these Buffalo Soldiers, Sergeants Stamps (Antwone Fisher's Derek Luke) and Bishop (Barbershop's Michael Ealy), Corporal Hector (Jarhead's Laz Alonso), and sweet, superstitious Private Train (The Express's Omar Benson Miller), get separated from their unit while fighting the Germans. On the way to higher ground, Train rescues a boy from the rubble. With nine-year-old Angelo (newcomer Matteo Sciabordi) in tow, the soldiers secure shelter in a Tuscan town, where they band together with the villagers, including lovely English speaker Renata (Artemisia's Valentina Cervi), nurse the delusional boy back to health (he has an imaginary playmate named Arturo), and prepare for the next attack. Like Inside Man, Miracle marks one of the few times Lee has drafted an outsider to write the script, in this case bestselling author James McBride, who adapts from his novel. The combination of sensibilities results in a film that alternates, sometimes awkwardly, between cynicism and sentimentality. Tonal irregularities aside, Miracle at St. Anna pays overdue tribute to the 15,000 men who fought for freedom in a country that showed them greater respect than their nation of origin. --Kathleen C. Fennessy