Miracle at St. Anna (2008)
Average Rating: 5.2/10
Reviews Counted: 118
Fresh: 40 | Rotten: 78
Miracle at St. Anna is a well-intentioned but overlong, disjointed affair that hits few of the right notes.
Average Rating: 4.6/10
Critic Reviews: 37
Fresh: 8 | Rotten: 29
Miracle at St. Anna is a well-intentioned but overlong, disjointed affair that hits few of the right notes.
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Average Rating: 3.3/5
User Ratings: 16,478
My Rating
Movie Info
Spike Lee's World War II film Miracle at St. Anna begins in 1983 with Hector Negron, a veteran of that war, unexpectedly shooting a customer dead. Police discover that the suspect, a quiet postal worker, kept a statue head worth millions of dollars in his apartment. An eager young reporter (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) interviews Negron in his cell about the mysterious artifact. While serving in the all-minority 92nd "Buffalo Soldier" Division, Negron and three comrades managed to sneak deep into enemy
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Cast
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Derek Luke
2nd Staff Sergeant Aubr... -
Michael Ealy
Sergeant Bishop Cumming... -
Laz Alonso
Corp. Hector Negron -
Omar Benson Miller
Private First Class Sam... -
Valentina Cervi
Renata -
Matteo Sciabordi
Angelo Torancelli -- th... -
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Tim Boyle -
John Turturro
Detective "Tony" Ricci -
John Leguizamo
Enrico -
Kerry Washington
Zana Wilder -
D.B. Sweeney
Colonel Driscoll -
Robert John Burke
General Ned Almond -
Omari Antonutti
Huggs -
Omero Antonutti
Ludovico -
Sergio Albelli
Rodolfo -
Alexandra Maria Lara
Axis Sally -
Pierfrancesco Favino
Pepi "the Great Butterf...
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Miracle at St. Anna Trailer & Photos
All Critics (119) | Top Critics (37) | Fresh (41) | Rotten (82) | DVD (12)
Lee is a filmmaker who, through talent, accomplishment, and a constant working of the refs in the Hollywood system, has earned autonomy over his films. I'm all for artistic freedom, but here he could have used a bit of oversight.
Top CriticIt's impressive that a filmmaker of Lee's distinction is willing to continue to push boundaries.
Clocking in at 160 minutes, this interminable movie comes across like a rough cut. Perhaps Lee believed its length would give it gravitas. The opposite is true.
Given the importance of that subject, the real mystery of Mr. Lee's movie is why it's so diffuse, dispirited, emotionally distanced and dramatically inert.
Overwrought, overproduced, overbusy and overlong, Miracle at St. Anna finally suffers from the worst filmmaking sin of all: the failure of trust, in the story and the audience.
[Lee] resorts to many of the same hoary clichés and fantasy situations he so frequently condemns.
At 160 minutes, it definitely suffers from Oscar Bloat.
Miracle makes a bid for epic status, but Lee throws in more elements - including murder mystery and supernatural fantasy - than the narrative can stand. The two big battle scenes are impressively staged, but the action in between sprawls and stumbles.
Takes too long to get to its one moving moment at the end.
Spike Lee has turned in an odd hybrid of a film--a 160 minute war epic combined with a crime thriller combined with a discourse on civil rights.
As a theoretical corrective, it's salutary; as a movie, it's a frickin' blooper
Watching these characters try to be worthy of a hero's film over the course of two and a half hours was simply excruciating.
The agenda is obvious, but the rage feels justified, and meanwhile Lee gives us a few virtuoso touches.
While it does have its weak points, it's held together by its unique angle on the war as well as strong characterization for its central characters.
Tries to be too many different things, with the only constant being a self-consciousness that never lets you forget you're watching a film rather than stepping back in time to experience life as a Buffalo Soldier.
This DVD joint isn't very fat.
Spike Lee's WWII saga belatedly pays tribute to the bravery of the black GIs known as the Buffalo Soldiers.
Problematic as a narrative...[but] Lee's simply too smart and talented to make a dismissible film. [Blu-ray]
The Blu-ray disc includes much more than the DVD, starting with a documentary on the real Buffalo Soldiers infantry division.
Ask ten people who've seen this movie what the title's "miracle" is referring to, and you'll get a couple of different guesses and a whole lot of blank stares and shrugs.
There are endearing moments but we're in a Spike Lee world where it's okay to interject his "black vs. the privileged white-man" lecture time and again to the detriment of the film.
Audience Reviews for Miracle at St. Anna
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Foreign Titles
- Miracle at Santa Anna (UK)
As a war-film this is by far one of the best one of them that i've ever seen, but to say that it is only a war-film film would be a crime. Actually it is mystery, suspenser and a heartfelt drama also. It is one of those films that takes you in for a cinematic adventure and you never know where it is going to go next. As i sat through this quite magnificent film, i went through so many different feelings. It is a film about horrors of war, hope, love, hate, magic and brotherhood. There are moments so brutal that i wanted to turn my head away and then there were true moments of joy that brought smile to my face. This is a film that has the raw emotional power that so many other films lack.
Spike Lee may be a controversial director and does not always know when too much is too much with his films. There has been many failures in his career in 80's and 90's, but lately he has showed a new kind of talent with his films like 25th Hour and Inside Man. Miracle at St. Anna is something truly unique in his filmography and shows us a director at the peak of his powers. With this film director Spike Lee has made his best film to date.