Review of Miracle at St. Anna (2008) by Nick B — 27 Sep 2009

64/100. Can't say that I would highly recommend this movie to anyone. There were parts that worked very very well.

**** Spoilers *****.

I liked the plot pieces where the statue head made the fat guy invisible and gave him good luck- although it didn't give anyone much luck in the final scene except for the lone survivor.

The little boy who was seemingly touched by God and can fix anything.

I liked the townsman who was in hiding from the Nazis and was the reason for the big fire at the church- he was a sympathetic character who was double crossed.

The story about the sleeping man on the hill- when the fat guy's face sort of mirrored the face on the hill- the town knew that he was awaken and would protect the town- although most everybody there died.

I also liked the fued between the leader of their group and the "playa" who ended up bangin' the hospitable woman there. The leader was a gentleman and it seemed like he knew that black people needed to be very well behaved all of the time to get respect and try to make the world a better place for their grand children with regards to race relations- and the way the Playa was acting appeared to keep blacks from getting respect in the leader's eyes. If the hicks were saying that black people are uncivilized and cause trouble- the Playa wasn't doing anything to counter those views.

The funny thing is that as I am writing this, I have a lot of positive things to say about this film... I've actually changed the rating from 40% to 60% because of this mid- review. I'm not a professional and it is difficult to pinpoint why I didn't LOVE this movie, but that's just the feeling that I got watching it.

The ending was a bit disappointing too. It was obvious that the little german kid was going to be the one bailing him out at the end- and although it was only a matter of days - at most weeks- since he's seen the status head, he appeared as though he hadn't seen it since the war. Maybe he was happy that the head seemed to save his butt again by getting him out of jail for the duration of the trial, but that goes against why he killed that guy in the bank.

I'm not sure why he killed that guy- it looked like he recognized him from the war, but it wasn't tied together as such in the movie. After seeing the whole movie, I can assume that he planned on killing someone at work in cold blood so that he would get the death penalty and finally rest in heaven with his deceased wife (who was never mentioned in the movie except for when he said he wanted to be with her).

Bottom line, there were some great parts in the movie, but it didn't seem to be tied together very well in the end. Maybe it was just a little too abstract or symbolic for my intellect.