(Entertainment Weekly) -- Spike Lee's last film, the gratifyingly tense and tricky "Inside Man," was celebrated -- rightly -- for the way that Lee finally jumped, feet first, into the studio-genre-movie game.



Director Spike Lee poses for a shot during the filming of "Miracle at St. Anna" in Rome, Italy.



He cooked up a gourmet-popcorn heist thriller and stamped every moment with his personality. Lee, until now, has never made a movie -- good or bad -- that wasn't unmistakably his.



His latest, "Miracle at St. Anna," is the first Hollywood feature to tell the story of the African-American soldiers who fought in the U.S. armed forces during World War II , and as such it's a movie with a monumental mission. Unfortunately, that's more or less the only monumental thing about it.



"Miracle" isn't powerful, it's muddled and diffuse, and the disappointment of the film begins with what a hard time I had finding Spike Lee in it.



Based on a 2002 novel by James McBride, who also wrote the screenplay, the movie has a drifting, scattershot structure and no real organizing tone or style (if you wondered what Lee's frozen-figure-on-receding-background shots might look like in a wartime setting, then keep wondering).



The bizarrely contrived framing device is set in the 1980s, when a postal worker named Hector Negron (Laz Alonso) mutters in anger at an old John Wayne war flick on TV, then shoots and kills a man who shows up to buy stamps. (He surely has his reasons, but does he really get away with stashing a loaded Luger under his post-office window each day?)  Watch Spike Lee talk about the film »



After his arrest, Hector won't talk, but a reporter finds a clue in the form of a priceless artifact hidden in his apartment: the head of a statue that once adorned a bridge in Florence that was wrecked by bombs during World War II.



From this labored and gimmicky setup, the film flashes back to the itch and fear of battle, as Hector, along with other members of the all-black 92nd Infantry Division and its ''Buffalo Soldiers,'' stalks the Tuscan countryside.



It's September 1944, and as they try to cross the Serchio River, the men are ambushed. The sequence has thunderous explosions, jittery editing, blown-up bodies -- everything but the virtuosity of staging that might have made the chaos and carnage revelatory instead of just a Saving Private Ryan rehash.



Four members of the division end up stranded behind enemy lines, all but abandoned by a racist commander. In addition to Negron, there's Staff Sgt. Aubrey Stamps (Derek Luke), a college-educated stoic devoted to his service; Sgt. Bishop Cummings (Michael Ealy), furious at the world and a loose cannon, with no loyalty to the country he's fighting for; and Pvt. Sam Train (Omar Benson Miller), a starry-eyed oversize simpleton who rescues, and befriends, an Italian urchin (Matteo Sciabordi).



The dramatic focal point, if you can call it that, is the war of wills between Stamps and Cummings. These two play out a version of the assimilate-versus-agitate debate that has echoed through many decades of African- American life, though this one would be more convincing if Ealy, a dynamic actor, had been asked to project his anger more in period, with a little less proto-gangsta recklessness.



The men arrive at a picturesque village, where they mingle with the locals and Stamps and Cummings stoke their rivalry over Renata (Valentina Cervi), a married woman who is lovely in a saintly way. The film then veers into an endless, murky subplot about the Italian resistance from which it never recovers.



"Miracle at St. Anna" wants to do too many things at once to do any of them with much verve. It aspires to be a war epic, but it's dominated less by combat
what Movie based on a 2002 novel by James McBride? Who wrote a screenplay? What genre does James Mcbride write? What isn't powerful? what "Miracle" isn't powerful but muddled and diffuse? Who is Spike Lee? What was the movie based on? what Spike Lee's film tells story of African-American?
"Miracle at St. Anna," James McBride, studio-genre-movie game. "Miracle" "Miracle at St. Anna" Director African-American soldiers who fought in the U.S. armed forces during World War II "Miracle at St. Anna,"
question: what Movie based on a 2002 novel by James McBride?, answer: "Miracle at St. Anna," | question: Who wrote a screenplay?, answer: James McBride, | question: What genre does James Mcbride write?, answer: studio-genre-movie game. | question: What isn't powerful?, answer: "Miracle" | question: what "Miracle" isn't powerful but muddled and diffuse?, answer: "Miracle at St. Anna" | question: Who is Spike Lee?, answer: Director | question: What was the movie based on?, answer: African-American soldiers who fought in the U.S. armed forces during World War II | question: what Spike Lee's film tells story of African-American?, answer: "Miracle at St. Anna,"