Stephanie

Just read your review and I got to check out the movie.You may think that some one would not purposely kill their own men in combat.You would be wrong . How do I know? Because I was a combat Marine in Vietnam and an officer knowingly bombarded our position.His explanation later was that we were being overrun.He was 500 yard away from us.He later got a medal for his actions.In our squad we had black, white, hispanic,etc.I am black and it was on my mind constantly .Why am i fighting in a elite military organization for a country where I am a second class citizen?

Stephanie I just read your review. I have not seen the movie yet, but I plan on seeing it this week end. At one part of your interview, you state that you can not believe that an officer would knowingly send men out to be killed in a combat zone. I'm here to tell you that it can happen. How do I know? Because I was a combat Marine in Vietnam in 1965 and 1966. One time an officer called down artillery fire on my outfit. There was no need for that action and his actions caused several casualties. He later got a medal for it because he say it we were being overrun. It was a lie. From my combat experience I can say that anything and everything can happen. You have no idea. As a black man I constantly questioned, why was I fighting in an elite military organization? When in my own country, I was a second-class citizen.

This review contains three "but"s, an "and yet," one "on the other hand," capped off by a, "Still..."

Hay-zoos H. Christmas, Steph.

Why the reluctance to tell it like it is--as other, perhaps braver reviewers are doing: This flick is an interminable mess that, with any luck, will finally prove that the real Spike Lee is as interesting to watch as the real M. Night Shyamalan, or any of the other one-hit wonders endlessly promoted by an American film industry desperate for original talent.

Just wondering.

I was beginning to think I was the only one noticing this "don't say anything negative about Spike" syndrome. Every review I've read says the movie is heavy-handed and schmaltzy, and they go downhill from there, yet no one wants to ask the obvious- Is Spike talented? Clint Eastwood, a truly talented director, must be lauging his ____ off.

It's about time someone in Hollywood makes a film about WWII.

on the other hand, mired in enemy territory, even the most racist commanding officer probably wouldn't be keen on losing able-bodied soldiers, regardless of their color.

Absolutely wrong. Anyone who knows WWII history knows that this is believable.

It probable that the officer would call in artillery fire in real life, even while knowing the men could be there. Have you heard of Caen? The number of innocent civilians killed there over a bridge? St. Lo? Hamburg and the pow camp there? Nagasaki and Hiroshima and pows caught in the bombs? The James Cagney film 13 Rue Madeleine? The whole Island Hop is an exercise in using soldiers to show that we were doing something. The direct naval battles (Midway for instance) were more strategically important.

Five soldiers would never prevent an airstrike.

I am a military historian. I will see this movie. I'm hearing that they tried to be faithful to the tangled, chaotic history of war, and that some of the scenes are almost perfect. Perhaps a WWII historian should review it. Zacharek really doesn't understand the war as context here.

I've just come out of a discussion with military men over where the commander's judgement, military necessity, and civilian casualties meet on a battlefield. Judgement is the subtext of the book, and it sounds like that is still the subtext here.

I wish you were wrong. But the oral histories of Vietnam are littered with stories like yours.

Perhaps Zacharek can read "Strength for the Fight" about the history of black soldiers, or Kennedy's "The Second World War".

This article may help: artillery fire and bombing were not very precise in the way Zacharek believes.

http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/Shrader/shrader.asp

I wonder what Zacharek would have thought of the "Big Red One", which evidently influenced Lee here.

The various participants in war and war historians weighing in here are talking about bombming that occurs for tactical purposes--the benefit to destroying an area is more important than the lives of men lost. I can believe this happens, in fact has to happen, as awful as it is (and no, I don't expect the people trapped in such an area to be okay with this).

But it sounds to me like Spike's thesis is the men were expendable because they were black, not because blowing up the bridge was the chosen battle tactic, and that this is what she doesn't believe.

Do any of you think racial antagonism leads to such choices in warfare? In warfare of that era?

I tend to agree with Zacharek on this, but I may be too much of an optimist.

I've always though Eastwood was a marginal-at-best filmmaker who's accolades come from a combination of his personal magnatisim and the topics he chooses. Making a movie about Charlie Parker is a great idea, but does anyone at this distance really want to watch (or rewatch) Bird? Was it anything other than a terrible bio-pic?

Lee showed himself to have a natural gift for film early on. But I don't think he's developed. He seems to have regressed. And this may relate to the struggles and box office reaction to Malclom X. Or it may be that he doesn't want to develop technically or intellectually. I wish he hadn't given up comedy for drama, because I think he made sharper points, and more stinging critiques of society that way. He's sort of an alternative world Woody Allen who stubled with Interiors and mistakingly kept taking his movies further in that direction.