Miracle at St. Anna (2008)

Directed by: Spike Lee

Starring: Laz Alonso

***

Miracle at St. Anna could very possibly be Spike Lee's best made movie, technically speaking. So many of Lee's films have a look and feel about them that screems "Spike Lee Joint!". This one didn't. What it did have the was the look and feel of a talented and experienced filmmaker's work.

The story opens with the shooting of man in a post office. Hector Negron, a decorated WWII veteran killed a man for some mysterious reason and upon further investigation, a valuable Italian sculture is found in his home. So what happened? We learn what happened as we flashback to the story of four buffalo soldiers and a young Italian boy during the war.

The battle scenes in this movie rivaled those from Saving Private Ryan. The realism was astouding, the performances felt real and action was intense. This aside, there are two key problems with this film, both of which did it a lot of harm. First and foremost is the fact that the majority of the movie played like a first draft. Lines of dialogue sounded rediculous and certain scenes ran too long. The performances in the movie were actually quite good in one sense and occasionally bad in another. Derek Luke, Michael Early, Omar Benson Miller and Laz Alonso played the characters of four soldiers trapped in an Italian village surrounded by Germans nearly perfectly. Strangely enough, they had a hard time delivering important lines. I've never really seen performances be so good and so bad at the same time. It seemed like they only had one take to get the line.

The other problem with this movie was its inability to have a message. Much of the movie explores the unfair treatment buffalo soldiers received from the country they were fighting for. Well, Spike Lee is such a racist that his agendas come across on screen and its very hard to get past. The more of his films I see, the more I enjoy what he has to offer but if only he could ignore the racial segregation that has and perhaps still does exist in this country at least while he's trying to make a movie, his movies would feel much more real. The film perhaps called for a beautiful German woman speaking over a loud speaker about how the black soldiers should fight for them because they care about them as opposed to America, but it didn't need to go on for twenty minutes. The first five minutes seemed like she was talking to the other characters. The rest seemed like she was trying to tell every white person in America what awful people we are.

Miracle at St. Anna is a two and a half hour recount of events in order to learn three things... Why Hector killed the man, where he got the Italian sculpture and who is the sleeping man. I'm pretty sure I figured out the answers to all of them. Each question is related in a pretty significant and interesting way however there is not a whole lot of certainty surrounding the explanations and there certainly isnt enough emotional impact to the explanations to warrant the final scene of the movie. While appropriate, it didn't quite feel real.

I would say that overall, Miracle at St. Anna got a bit of a bad rap. Its slow moving but doesn't drag. Its presents a lot of questions but answers them all and it has bad performances but they are good at the same time so to say its a bad movie might be a bit harsh. Saying its a good one is probably too generous but what the hell.