Review of Miracle at St. Anna (2008) by Brian C — 29 Apr 2009

Spike Lee shot himself in the foot when he criticized Clint Eastwood's two-film Iwo Jima masterpiece for not showing the role of African Americans during WW2. First off, the Japanese army didn't have any black soldiers, and second, Flags of Our Fathers does talk about how minorities were mistreated at this time, despite their contributions to the war effort.

But Miracle at St Anna really is a great film, nowhere near as good as Eastwood's films, but still worthy of attention. It depicts in harrowing detail how all black soldiers were seen pretty much as Operation Human Shield throughout much of the war. Even the Germans were able to point that out to them. Lee also shows the division of black soldiers between themselves. There's a great scene where one soldier flirts with an Italian lady, and another onlooking soldier says, "People like him have set our people back almost 400 years." A little on the nose, but the line gets the job done.

Lee has always been a very ambitious filmmaker, and here, he tries to cover the battle from all angles: the peasant Italians, the Italian renegades, the Nazis, the white Americans, and of course the black Americans. At times, the film seems to wander on tangeants, but the emotional impact that Lee is aiming for is never lost. Even as cheesy as the last sequence is, it puts the title into a lot of perspective.