Review of Miracle at St. Anna (2008) by Daniel K — 27 Mar 2009

This was a pretty substantial disappointment for me. I certainly don't profess to be a big Spike Lee fan, but I was still hoping for something far closer to the quality of his best work. The film has problems on numerous levels, not the least of which is that Lee can't quite figure out what kind of film he is making.

He packs it so full of divergent ideas and potential plot lines one isn't quite sure what he's trying to say. This also means that the messages are spelled out far too clearly. Themes like this are far more effective when they are handled less roughly.

Subtlety or an overwhelming inundation should be the standard bearers here. It's like Lee is trying to make up for 60 years of non-black WWII movies. This obviously doesn't work very well. It gets a bit ridiculously jumbled at times and is far less than cinematically effective.

The musical cues and practically constant score is distracting rather than elevating in nature. Any director that can't let the film speak for itself, but demands this much nondescript music is lacking in my opinion.

The script is pretty horrendous. It starts out well back in NYC, but quickly disintegrates and loses focus. Much of the dialogue just doesn't work for me, as well as many of the performances. The Nazis are idiotic, even when I've seen some of them play believable and excellent Nazis in other recent pictures.

Lee has essentially managed to destroy a perfectly good story by stuffing it full of unrelated and conflicting themes and elements.