Miracle At St. Anna

This movie should have been named Lost in Translation. Ahh Spike…What have you done? First you blast Clint Eastwood for not having enough black actors in Flags of Our Fathers or Letters From Iwo Jima to promote your film, then you release this. This film is a mess. It starts out very strongly, then jumps from here to there with way too many different then hard-to-follow story lines. His overall intention is good, and should be praised for that. The scope of the movie is grand and there is an important tribute and story to tell here, but not this way. Really, Spike you should fire your editor. At 2 hours and 40 minutes, this film is unnecessarily long and rambles in so many parts, it really gets hard to follow.

Like I indicated before, the general story of the movie is fascinating. There is a ex-war hero/current postal worker who commits a crime, leading to the discovery of a 450 year old Italian artifact in his apartment. This leads into the story of how he got it and why he still keeps it. The audience is then thrust into 1944 Italy during the height of World War II, following a division of black soldiers and their campaign. Four of them get separated from the rest of their company and come into contact with a young Italian boy. Thus begins the mess of Miracle at St Anna. Lee uses this point to waste screen time by useless babble, and worthless sub-plot lines that never come to fruition. There really is too much stuff here. He flashes back once in the movie to drive a point home, and it does, however it is placed in the wrong part of the movie.

The actors themselves do a fairly decent job with what they’ve got here, but there are no standouts. At some points in the movie, they seem to be unimpressed with the severity of their situation, and it just comes across unbelievable in general. There is one character, Sam Train, that I just didn’t get at all. Lee’s total character development is like his film: Unfocused.

As a Spike Lee fan and a World War II fanatic, I really wanted to like this movie. It’s too bad I couldn’t, given what is presented to us.

I’ll give it 2 out of 5 Reels(For the concept and the honor of the soldiers alone)