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Review: “Miracle at St. Anna”
By Kyle | September 26, 2008
Kyle Smith review of MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA
1 star
166 minutes/Rated R (strong war violence, profanity, sex, nudity)
If there is a miracle at “Miracle at St. Anna,” it will be that the audience manages to stay awake.
The title of worst Spike Lee film is a hotly contested one; they’re all pretty awful, except “Inside Man” and one or two others. But this would-be WW II epic is so scattershot and yet so bloated at the same time that its director seems barely in control of himself.
The film, based on James McBride’s novel, begins in 1980s New York, where a black postal worker shoots a white man who comes to his window asking for stamps. I wasn’t aware that in one of the most handgun-restricting states in the union, postal workers sit behind their windows with loaded pistols within arms reach, but I can’t say the information is surprising.
A tedious series of gumshoeing scenes follows, in which a cop (John Turturro) and a reporter (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) trade witless barbs and look into the case, which gets stranger when we learn that the postal worker, a decorated WW II vet, had in his possession a head from an Italian statue worth millions.
A talented filmmaker would have compressed these New York scenes into a few fleeting images and realized that the Turturro and Gordon-Levitt characters are entirely extraneous—especially in a nearly three-hour film. Instead, Lee adds more unnecessary scenes and characters (including a bizarrely irrelevant comic interlude with John Leguizamo, whom Lee must have owed a favor) before he gets to the main story, told in a long flashback.
It’s about the “Buffalo Soldiers,” a unit of black troops from the 92nd Infantry fighting the Germans (and a few Italians) in 1944 Italy. A handful of the soldiers get cut off from the rest and forced to make do for themselves with the aid of a US-friendly Italian family in a small town.
The Germans lurk everywhere and they’re starving. Yet despite one scene that shows them stealing the Italians’ livestock, it doesn’t seem to occur to them that they could approach an Italian household and take all of the food being consumed by the US soldiers. So the GIs and the Italians chow down, joke around, hook up and generally wander around the screen for a couple of exceeding dull hours. Despite the more immediate threats that face them, the men talk about racism back home and the future of civil rights. In one of the few scenes that carry any emotional impact, an oversized soldier (Omar Benson Miller) rescues a little boy trapped under a beam after an attack—and is dubbed “the chocolate giant” by the kid in Italian. Yet the rescued kid, who subsequently becomes a sort of mascot to the troops, quickly becomes a too-cute artifact that the script is forced to lug around. In several scenes, the kid speaks Italian (which is subtitled) while the soldiers respond in English, with neither side understanding anything.
A subplot about a member of the Italian resistance called “the Butterfly” who is trying to locate a traitor, a semi-meaningless romance between an Italian beauty and another soldier, and flashbacks that (as is always the case in Lee’s movies) too insistently stomp on the racism pedal (black soldiers who walk into a diner in the segregated South asking for food are chased away at gunpoint) further muddle things without ever taking on much urgency.
In large part the problem is in the incompetent directing—once you see a shootout staged by Lee you’ll realize how tricky it is to cut these things together. An overbearing score and Lee’s shrill, showy efforts to signal us he’s being “dramatic” put me in mind not of “Saving Private Ryan” but of “Top Secret,” the hilarious 80s war-movie parody with Val Kilmer that Lee unintentionally channels with an overbearing scene in which a Nazi officer barks orders.
An equally huge mistake is Lee’s determination to take this action-historical-mystery-race drama and add large dollops of senseless broad comedy. Never does this come to seem like the desperate humor of men in danger; instead, it’s sheer goofing around, as if Lee and all of the actors have forgotten they’re supposed to be in a life-and-death struggle. Consistently awful as the film is, though, it boldly saves up its most splendidly over-the-top moment for an ending whose ridiculousness is sheer camp.
September 20th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Go figure, Kyle doesnt like a Spike Lee movie? Who would have thunk it? Why doesnt Kyle like Spike Lee movies? Simple. He’s a racist lackey of the imperialist ruling circles.
September 20th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
It looks like most critics are “racist lackey[s] of the imperialist ruling circles”, at least if you go by Rotten Tomatoes and metacritic.
September 20th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Whoops, wasn’t paying enough attention to metacritic. Those were user votes, not review scores.
September 20th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
What do you mean most spike Lee movies are terrible, Are you nuts, or most likely racist, He has made mostly great films with his few recent pictures before inside man not up to par, bigot bastard!
September 20th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
What other Spike Lee movies do you not find awful, Kyle?
September 20th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Spike Lee’s worthwhile movies? Do the Right Thing (a undeniable classic), Mo’ Better Blues, Malcolm X, The Original Kings of Comedy (mostly for Bernie Mac), 25th Hour, Inside Man (even though it faltered at the end w/Jodie Foster’s character- and do we REALLY need a sequel, as planned?)…otherwise, his resume is pretty much skippable at best; somewhere, Clint Eastwood must be squinting…
September 20th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Most of the positive reviews have not been posted on Rotten Tomatoes, yet.
Calling Spike Lee a “racist lackey of the imperialist ruling circles” is a bit idiotic. You sound like a paranoid race baiting wierdo.
September 20th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Not sure I understand Kyle’s irrational hatred of Spike Lee. Spike has made some good films and some crap ones.
Personally, I could never understand why Summer of Sam got such a panning. I thought it was hilarious. The Adrien Brody character was brilliant and as I think I may have said before, the simple Italian goons who think he is the killer were quite reminiscent of many of the posters here.
Do the Right Thing was entertaining too.
September 20th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
jic–Most critics are lackeys to those who rule them. The one who rules Kyle just happens be a neoconservative, Friedman school, Australian who hates minorities of all stripes as well as the working class, the middle class, and the poor so hence alot of my skepticism about his reviews.
I just notice a trend in all Kyles reviews regardless of how good the actual film is or isnt in that 9 times out of 10 the film gets a bad review if its critical of corporatism, like Michael Clayton, amongst others, which is obviously based on Monsanto and their weed killer Roundup, or the military, like in the Valley of Elah, Stop Loss, No End In Sight, etc. In fact according to Kyle each one of these works regardless of the truth of its claims is nothing more than leftist or Marxist propoganda. I’m not even arguing whether or not these films are bad(Stop Loss was bad), but Kyle knocks them on the basis of whether or not they conform to his right wing political agenda. So in short, and based on the content of Lee’s film, how can I not come to the conclusion that this could be a good movie but Kyle hates it on ideological grounds. And worst of all hates it because of its very truth that black men were(and still are) treated like subhumans by both the society that bore them and by the military even though they fought just as hard and bled just the same and worst of all for both of these institutions that basically hated them.
And in reference to the voters on metacritic: Alot of voters think Sarah Palin is a worthwhile political candidate when she’s a completely inept mediocre politcal hack. In fact you and Kyle give her good reviews so why would I trust Kyles reviews on just about anything? To think Palin deserves anything more than one star proves your sense of aesthetics is worse than Hitlers.
September 20th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Kyles irrational hatred of Spike Lee is quite easy to understand and for the same reasons he had an irrational hatred of Wall-E, A Pixar Robot, because they are both critical of either the corporate and/or military establishment that Kyle loves and serves. Oddly enough though he has been duped into believing that criticizing cold, impersonal, forces like the corporate or military somehow make you anti-American thereby aggravating his hatreds even further because they arw now focued through the lens of nationalistic pride. I’m sure Taxi To the Dark Side got a bad review too if he bothered to see it in that it criticized and condemned torture practices, thought up by mad scientists, against what are in most cases innocent victims deprived of due process. But those criticizing torture are bad, not the actual torturers that are breaking laws or actually rewriting them in order to institute illegal practices. And why? Simple, they hate Kyles Big Brother.
September 20th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Ladies and gentlemen I give you Sal_P, the reincarnation of Abbey Hoffman. Let’s hear it for him. Most likely he hates Spike Lee’s movies because they aren’t good, and you most likely like them because you’re supposed to, probably the same reason you think Bob Dylan’s brilliant. You accuse Kyle of being a lackey and you’re the biggest lackey of them all and literally recylce left talking points, verbatim. It’s depressing to read but I’m sure you are very popular at your coffe shop and with professors. I’ve seen you on here before but you keep changing names to make it sound like there are more people who think like you; Darkside, TaxiToTheDarkside, Sal. Now go write some angry poetry about “corporations” on your Mac, drive over to Starbucks in your Prius and share it with your similarily directionless hippy friends. You don’t even know what you’re angry about.
September 20th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Brandon, what you and your bro Sal share in common is a phobia of the return key.
Mo is insane but at least he separates his sentences into 1, 2 and 3. Do us a favour and learn from him.
September 20th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Can you possibly consider that instead of serving some nefarious right wing corporate conspiracy, Klyle Smith simply disliked the movie? Has the PC nonsense gotten so deep that we have no choice but to praise Lee’s latest come-to-life cartoon, no matter it’s suckitude? He ruined a great book like “Clockers”. And for that, he should’ve caught a serious ration of___. But being able to call anyone who says boo a racist has allowed his incompetence as a filmmaker to go unstated(exceptwhen it comes to financing). Let his go back to hawking Nikes and making an ass of himself at Knicks games, which seems to be his true love anyway.
September 20th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Jules,
Point well taken but I’ve learned a horrible secret. Seperate paragraphs trigger the dreaded “awaiting moderation” thing. As a bit of a grammar nazi it pains me to leave it that way but many post “awaiting moderation” go the way of the missing sock in the dryer.
September 21st, 2008 at 12:36 am
I loved 25th Hour.
September 21st, 2008 at 1:38 am
@John
Agreed. 25th Hour is excellent.
September 21st, 2008 at 2:25 am
I’m not saying “St. Anna” is any good, but Kyle hates Spike Lee because he represents the ultra-liberal progressive black man who has fought “the man” and stifling conservatism his whole career. Given Kyle’s blind hatred of anything/anyone with even slightly liberal views, I’m amazed he admits he even liked “Inside Man.”
September 21st, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Not that he needs it, but I’m going to stand up for Kyle’s reviewing chops here. As a Bush-deranged liberal myself, I’ve noticed his tendency to look for a conservative moral in movies. But as I said before, that’s a completely valid part of his criteria. He’s not, however, a knee-jerk reactionary in his praise or his criticism. Most of the time, I see his points about the skill — or lack thereof — behind the making of a movie.
Case in point: “The Lucky Ones,” which I saw just this week. My full review hits Friday, but safe to say, I agree with Kyle. It’s just not very good.
September 21st, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Anybody who’s been here a while knows what’s coming next.
September 26th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
OK, while I jumped the gun last week, metacritic now agrees that it sucks.
September 26th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
kyle,
Apparently hating on certain movies attracts the loons. Must be a migratory pattern.
September 26th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
‘Apparently hating on certain movies attracts the loons. ‘
That would indeed explain your appearance on the thread.
September 28th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
From She’s Gotta Have It through Malcolm X, Lee failed to make a movie that was less than entertaining, but since then, he’s been hit or miss, and with the exception of The Original Kings of Comedy, his comedies are even more unwatchable than anything by ex-SNLers.