Miracle at St. Anna

Let me begin by saying that this movie was okay. But it could have been way better.

The story itself is great and kept me interested until the end, but it's execution could have been much better. Throughout the movie, some of the acting ranged from good to bad to downright lame. Jon Turturro's cameo as a detective was extremely disappointing, for instance. The acting picks up when the flashback begins, but every so often it rockets down.

The battle scenes were, for lack of a better word, comical. They were over the top and stereotypical of any other war movie, complete with bodies being flung from explosions in an exaggerated fashion and people sobbing over amputated rubber limbs.

The characters were all over the place on the sympathy scale. Stamps and Trey (or is it Train?) elicit plenty of sympathy, whereas Bishop and whatever the girl's name was only brought out anger from me.

The worst part of the movie is the editing, though. Some of the battle scenes are choppy, and there are entire cuts to different scenes for split seconds that we could have done without (they serve no purpose whatsoever).

My biggest problem was the stereotypical racism of the white characters in the movie. The only American white people in the movie are shown as black-hating jerks who's ignorance leads them to destruction.

Overall, the movie was good. Not amazing, not great, definitely not a masterpiece, but it wasn't terrible or bad or crappy. It was a great story, but it could have been executed much better.

6.5 Stars.

MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA got panned pretty severely. And I can see why. Lacking cohesion and hopscotching around like a child with A-D-D, the story is tough to follow. And what about the title? Exactly what is "the Miracle"? Some might say it's that this film ever got made. But there are some upsides to it that I think make this a semi-watchable flick.

The first plus is that it focuses on a little known regiment of black WW II fighters called "The Buffalo Soldiers." Spike Lee had apparently been aching to do another "black story" and found his muse in Nazi occupied Italy.

Although there's been some bashing related to overacting on the main characters' parts, I didn't find that to be the case. Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, and the rest of these band of brothers did fine in my eyes. Although Spike did have them doing things that weren't being done during this time (specifically the "high five" which wasn't realized until the late 70s), I did find their delivery of the story to be engaging enough, and kept me watching during its entire, lengthy, 2 hours and 40 minute run time.

I also really liked the on-site filming locations in Italy, which gave the entire production a very real quality. The cobbled streets, twisted landscape, and ancient-looking buildings were all well-shown in the film and had me ogling at various times.

But, as they say, all good things must come to an end. Although Spike Lee tries admirably to keep the story together, he too often wanders off on tangents that have nothing to do with the story. One particularly infuriating scene involves John Leguizamo (THE HAPPENING). He's in modern day Italy with his lover and his only use for being in the film is that he throws a newspaper out a window so that it lands on a man's table. Why couldn't the man have simply seen it at a newsstand? Why the whole set up with Leguizamo and the hot chick? Sex for the sake of sex, perhaps? The other, less infuriating, item that shows Spike wandering away was when he films the Buffalo boys being refused food service at a place back in the States before they were shipped overseas. Why this played a role in the film and what it had to do with the Miracle is anyone's guess.

Finally, there's the tough sell of the Miracle itself. Although people can debate what qualifies as a miracle, I think most would say it equates to something supernatural that cannot be explained by normal evidence. And here lies perhaps the biggest problem for Miracle at St. Anna. There really isn't a miracle. Perhaps it's well enough that one of the Buffalo men made it home and found his way to peace. Perhaps it's that the world spun and allowed the last surviving Buffalo Soldier to avenge the people of St. Anna and his fallen brothers. Perhaps ...but not likely.

Lee makes a European film allowing philosophical questions and moral questions to supplant desire for personal satisfaction and identifiable this is a Spike Lee film signature patterns. There are a number of excellent directorial decisions in this film. Lee's camera is sensitive, gentle and sincere. He shows us the many ways our eyes are deceived and how much of what we perceive is illusion. I think its a great film that is inspirational, has meaning and is both emotionally and intellectually satisfying. I hope that Lee will continue to make films outside his comfort zone and articulate events from the African American experience around the world to show our contribution to history and civilization.

I don't know why everyone here keeps telling that this movie is bad, because it's definitely rather good. Only thing to take out of plot was mas execution of civilians which I couldn't take and just pressed "skip the scene". From the very beginning, where troops advancing to enemy lines got under artillery and machine-gun fire dialogs are interesting and realistic, let alone so called hook from first minutes where black postman kills his customer for no apparent reason. It cost $45M to produce and true that commercially it has become a screw up but not everything revolves around money. I say it has no major faults in plot, definitely no more than any other picture does. And that story with Italian girl - Renata was her name, all is fair in love and war. Definitely worth seeing. Comparison to Save Private Ryan is not applicable.

A funny thing happens when you're counted among the preeminent talents in any contemporary art form: Everything you do must approach sublime... or else. Something less funny happens when your art is as socially outspoken as Spike Lee's body of work: Folk wait with baited breath to name every shred of detail that marks your work as somehow less than sublime. And in so doing, they ever miss the forest for the trees.

Lee's latest "joint," MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA, based on James McBride's novel of the same name, no doubt will suffer from such deconstruction, some of which will be justified. At 160+ minutes, the fictional recollection of four black American WWII soldiers who get trapped in an Italian village during a German insurgence, can wax tedious. And Lee's defaulting to certain conventions of the war genre and his own signature style occasionally comes off forced, sentimental, even ridiculous. After, say, the 10th close-up of a slain human -- eyes still open in horror -- we may not need to see an 11th, 12th, 13th. And any casual student of cinema might spot Lee's attempted tear-jerker ending a la CINEMA PARADISO coming a mile away.

Then there are the technical shortcomings of personnel who should know better: A score by Terence Blanchard is uncharacteristically overwrought; cinematography by Matthew Libatique is alternately breathtaking and obtuse; and a self-adapted screenplay by McBride suffers from a conspicuously uncommitted point of view. But, indeed, what may most undercut any visceral charm of MASA is at once admirably realistic: The film's characters aren't particularly moving in their conflicted natures and utter lack of romance. Only a visionary Italian boy, played beautifully by newcomer Matteo Sciabordi, and the black American soldier who befriends him, played by the hulking Omar Benson Miller, elicit any real sympathy.

All told, the numerous missteps do not seriously undercut a captive tale of humans -- white, black and brown -- who find themselves thrown into a hell not of their making and forced to juggle universal sensibilities with the duties of their divergent identities. In this regard, Lee's latest shows marked progress: Gone are the one-sided depictions of whites. Fascist-era native Italians are shown here in all their warring complexity; American actor D.B. Sweeney plays a key, if understated, role as a white U.S. colonel opposed to the exploitation of the all-black 92nd Army Division; even Nazi stormtroopers here are given back a modicum of humanity. Neither is the African American experience sanctified: Actor Michael Ealy's preacher-turned-soldier character is equal parts charming and vile; and one pre-Civil Rights-era American flashback begs the question of what line separates hero and villain. If one is willing to forgive the imperfect details from a filmmaker who has proved capable of better, the aggregate statement is hardly ineffectual.

Lee's real victory here shouldn't be missed. MASA does not rise to the level of the best of the genre. Neither is it worthy to be called the definitive tribute to an unsung 92nd Army Division or the souls lost at Sant'Anna di Stazzema. But it is always watchable, always interesting -- and as an engaging enough mystery film and thoughtful ensemble piece with an important, forgotten corner of human failure as backdrop, it succeeds.