"Let's call this a miss from one of our best filmmakers. Spike Lee tried to cram three movies into this two hour, forty minute mish-mash... But the overall execution comes off as aimless."

I like Spike Lee. Liked He Got Game. Liked Inside Man. Really liked 25th Hour, one of the underrated films of our generation. But Miracle at St. Anna is a huge disappointment, coming off as though Spike wasn't entirely sure which story he was trying to tell. Is this a moving tribute to The Buffalo Soldiers? A solemn remembrance of the Sant'Anna Massacre? A comment on race relations? Or maybe we're to infer the whole thing is a mystery. Essentially, in trying to be a catchall Miracle at St. Anna becomes a diluted mess.

That's a shame, because there are many moments here worth watching. There are vignettes that haunt me a full 72 hours after seeing it -- and I'm saddened that a real movie with a real story wasn't wrapped around those moments. Because we know Lee is capable. This isn't an issue of a guy not knowing what he's doing. No, it's more an issue of picking the wrong script and then running hard with it.

The story largely orbits around four of the aforementioned Buffalo Soldiers on the front lines of the World War II campaign in Italy. They become separated from their unit, stranded behind enemy lines. Derek Luke plays a stalwart Staff Sergeant in the film. Michael Ealy was evidently told to channel Tim Meadows' Ladies Man as his main function within the group seems to be to say "Mmmmhmmmm" suggestively while leering at women. Omar Benson Miller is much like Bubba from Forest Gump: he's huge but slightly clueless, and his rescue of a small Italian boy named Angelo is what most of the movie is set around. The fourth member of the group is Laz Alonso as Hector Negron, a Puerto Rican gent who mostly tries to stay above the fray.

The film has a few problems, the first of which is the heavy-handed manipulativeness of some of the racial issues. As this isn't a true story (it's based on a novel), many of the scenes come together a little too conveniently. If it had been based on eyewitness accounts, or the chronicle of one of the soldiers, I'm sure it would have felt much more sincere. Even if one can get past that it's hard to figure what the message is here. Is it that the Nazis did some abhorrently evil things? That's been covered. If the goal was the bravery and social conflicts of The Buffalo Soldiers, this film largely ignores that too, as it mostly focuses on just four guys, generally not in combat, fighting amongst themselves. It's also an ineffective mystery in that the issue the trailer presents (where did this Italian head come from and why did a former member of the Buffalo Soldiers shoot an old man?) isn't really relevant to anything the movie covers.

So let's call this a miss from one of our best filmmakers. Spike Lee probably tried to cram three movies into this two-hour and forty-minute mishmash. I can't blame him for wanting to force things in, as many of these topics have been ignored over the years. But it doesn't excuse the overall execution, which comes off as aimless. I can't recommend you spend your time or money on this. Rent 25th Hour instead.

Grade: D+

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