Review of Miracle at St. Anna (2008) by Robin P — 13 Apr 2010

An ambitious failure by Spike Lee. Based on James McBride's book, "Miracle at St. Anna" is Spike Lee's attempt at a World War II movie in telling the story of a group of black soldiers fighting against the Nazis while they are being treated as second class citizens back home.

The soldiers become trapped in a Tuscan village surrounded by the enemy and so they immerse themselves among Italian peasants to survive. The movie begins and ends with a modern framing device of a murder leading to the discovery of an ancient artifact that tracks us back to the war.

This mystery device doesn't work. One of the biggest flaws of the movie is that it is wildly over scaled. The script lacks focus and dramatic momentum. The characterizations are frequently poor. Most of the white soldiers are just one-dimensional racists and even the black soldiers are often just caricatures.

Lee hammers home the point that these heroic soldiers are fighting for a country that doesn't provide them equal rights as we get lots of speeches about racist America. Lee is at his best in the quiet scenes between a soldier and young boy who become friends despite language barriers or the brief romance between a soldier and an Italian woman.

Terrance Blanchard's score is one of the most obtrusive and overbearing uses of music I've seen in a movie. There is a lot of violence at the end that becomes so repetitive that after two and a half hours I was bored.

The ending is so maudlin it becomes laughable, like Spielberg at his worst. Major disappointment from a great director. With John Turturro, D.B. Sweeney, Naomi Campbell, Derek Luke, John Leguizamo, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso, Omar Benson Miller, Matteo Sciabordi.