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
territory in Italy. One of the men, Sam Train (Omar Benson Miller), picked the head up while they were serving in Florence and believes it brings him good luck. Negron (Laz Alonso), Train, and Bishop Cummings (Michael Ealy), along with their sergeant, Aubrey Stamps (Derek Luke), take refuge in the Italian village of St. Anna, harbored by locals who are resisting the Nazis -- who themselves surround the area. Train also protects an injured Italian boy he discovers while investigating a seemingly abandoned dwelling. Eventually, the soldiers make contact with their superiors, and are ordered to capture a German so that he may be interrogated about an upcoming attack. Lee adapted Miracle at St. Anna from a novel by James McBride, who also penned the screenplay. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
whoever wrote the script should be sentenced to 10 courses in remedial scriptwriting 101. What a mess - dialogue right out of a high school play, while beating us over the head with its message, and being completely unable to decide what type of film it wants to be.
We take a prommissing start, with some nice
cinematic touches, sprinkle in some odd noir (Torturo and the reporter are right out of a Chandler novel), and then do a 180 into a not very intense war piece that is more about snafus and human frailties than anything else (the writer even feels compelled to explain snafu - good grief!).
In attempting to explain all the bizarre situations, there are still holes a mile wide in the narrative, and often actors are left either over emoting or trying to get some kind of feel for the lousy dialog they have to speak.
The final payoff is contrived and ridiculous, and the little "sermon" given by the savior's servent is laughable and cringe worthy (closeup into the camera - as if we didn't already know that this drivel was the "message").
What a disappointment!
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