Miracle at St. Anna

MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA got panned pretty severely. And I can see why. Lacking cohesion and hopscotching around like a child with A-D-D, the story is tough to follow. And what about the title? Exactly what is "the Miracle"? Some might say it's that this film ever got made. But there are some upsides to it that I think make this a semi-watchable flick.

The first plus is that it focuses on a little known regiment of black WW II fighters called "The Buffalo Soldiers." Spike Lee had apparently been aching to do another "black story" and found his muse in Nazi occupied Italy.

Although there's been some bashing related to overacting on the main characters' parts, I didn't find that to be the case. Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, and the rest of these band of brothers did fine in my eyes. Although Spike did have them doing things that weren't being done during this time (specifically the "high five" which wasn't realized until the late 70s), I did find their delivery of the story to be engaging enough, and kept me watching during its entire, lengthy, 2 hours and 40 minute run time.

I also really liked the on-site filming locations in Italy, which gave the entire production a very real quality. The cobbled streets, twisted landscape, and ancient-looking buildings were all well-shown in the film and had me ogling at various times.

But, as they say, all good things must come to an end. Although Spike Lee tries admirably to keep the story together, he too often wanders off on tangents that have nothing to do with the story. One particularly infuriating scene involves John Leguizamo (THE HAPPENING). He's in modern day Italy with his lover and his only use for being in the film is that he throws a newspaper out a window so that it lands on a man's table. Why couldn't the man have simply seen it at a newsstand? Why the whole set up with Leguizamo and the hot chick? Sex for the sake of sex, perhaps? The other, less infuriating, item that shows Spike wandering away was when he films the Buffalo boys being refused food service at a place back in the States before they were shipped overseas. Why this played a role in the film and what it had to do with the Miracle is anyone's guess.

Finally, there's the tough sell of the Miracle itself. Although people can debate what qualifies as a miracle, I think most would say it equates to something supernatural that cannot be explained by normal evidence. And here lies perhaps the biggest problem for Miracle at St. Anna. There really isn't a miracle. Perhaps it's well enough that one of the Buffalo men made it home and found his way to peace. Perhaps it's that the world spun and allowed the last surviving Buffalo Soldier to avenge the people of St. Anna and his fallen brothers. Perhaps ...but not likely.

I don't know why everyone here keeps telling that this movie is bad, because it's definitely rather good. Only thing to take out of plot was mas execution of civilians which I couldn't take and just pressed "skip the scene". From the very beginning, where troops advancing to enemy lines got under artillery and machine-gun fire dialogs are interesting and realistic, let alone so called hook from first minutes where black postman kills his customer for no apparent reason. It cost $45M to produce and true that commercially it has become a screw up but not everything revolves around money. I say it has no major faults in plot, definitely no more than any other picture does. And that story with Italian girl - Renata was her name, all is fair in love and war. Definitely worth seeing. Comparison to Save Private Ryan is not applicable.

Length is a factor for this film, and it's not the normal action driven war film. I was lucky enough to attend the premier in NY and from the perspective of a Cadet at West Point, I would say that I respected this film BECAUSE it "jumped around." It showed all perspectives and that there were people with good intentions on all sides. The bad intentions were included as well, and though it doesn't grab you the entire time, it tells an interesting tale. Sadly, most people don't go to see a war film for this reasons, they all want Saving Private Ryan these days. But that's not what war is always about, and this film shows the other aspects. The black soldiers are each equally representative of varying perspectives that these men had. With a lot of duality also represented, this film leaves a lot to think about if you watch it with the right eye. It seems most people I've talked to have a problem with length and action, but if you don't pay so much attention to that and just enjoy it, you'll find a nice film that takes a different approach.

I attended the world premier of Miracle at St. Anna at Toronto International Film Festival. Unfortunately as much as I respect Spike Lee as a filmmaker I thought the movie was a bit dull and kind of boring. At 166 minutes I found that the movie was overlong and dragged too much. I became restless after awhile as the movie progressed. The story didn't seem to go anywhere, was uninteresting and I had trouble connecting with it. It was hard to follow at times as well. The movie jumped all over the place at several points to different years in the history of the characters. I found this to be jarring and irritating. Spike Lee should have taken more time to edit his film because each of the scenes went longer than they should have. It's not the worst movie I have ever seen although it could have been better. My expectations were high. I came away somewhat disappointed.

Let me begin by saying that this movie was okay. But it could have been way better.

The story itself is great and kept me interested until the end, but it's execution could have been much better. Throughout the movie, some of the acting ranged from good to bad to downright lame. Jon Turturro's cameo as a detective was extremely disappointing, for instance. The acting picks up when the flashback begins, but every so often it rockets down.

The battle scenes were, for lack of a better word, comical. They were over the top and stereotypical of any other war movie, complete with bodies being flung from explosions in an exaggerated fashion and people sobbing over amputated rubber limbs.

The characters were all over the place on the sympathy scale. Stamps and Trey (or is it Train?) elicit plenty of sympathy, whereas Bishop and whatever the girl's name was only brought out anger from me.

The worst part of the movie is the editing, though. Some of the battle scenes are choppy, and there are entire cuts to different scenes for split seconds that we could have done without (they serve no purpose whatsoever).

My biggest problem was the stereotypical racism of the white characters in the movie. The only American white people in the movie are shown as black-hating jerks who's ignorance leads them to destruction.

Overall, the movie was good. Not amazing, not great, definitely not a masterpiece, but it wasn't terrible or bad or crappy. It was a great story, but it could have been executed much better.

6.5 Stars.