- Director: Spike Lee
- AMG Rating:
- Genre: War
- Movie Type: War Drama
- Themes: Daring Rescues, Behind Enemy Lines, Race Relations
- Main Cast: Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso, Omar Benson Miller, Valentina Cervi
- Release Year: 2008
- Country: US/IT
- Run Time: 160 minutes
- MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Spike Lee's World War II film Miracle at St. Anna begins in 1983 with Hector Negron, a veteran of that war, unexpectedly shooting a customer dead. Police discover that the suspect, a quiet postal worker, kept a statue head worth millions of dollars in his apartment. An eager young reporter (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) interviews Negron in his cell about the mysterious artifact. While serving in the all-minority 92nd "Buffalo Soldier" Division, Negron and three comrades managed to sneak deep into enemy territory in Italy. One of the men, Sam Train (Omar Benson Miller), picked the head up while they were serving in Florence and believes it brings him good luck. Negron (Laz Alonso), Train, and Bishop Cummings (Michael Ealy), along with their sergeant, Aubrey Stamps (Derek Luke), take refuge in the Italian village of St. Anna, harbored by locals who are resisting the Nazis -- who themselves surround the area. Train also protects an injured Italian boy he discovers while investigating a seemingly abandoned dwelling. Eventually, the soldiers make contact with their superiors, and are ordered to capture a German so that he may be interrogated about an upcoming attack. Lee adapted Miracle at St. Anna from a novel by James McBride, who also penned the screenplay. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie GuideReview
Despite Spike Lee's carefully cultivated reputation as a firebrand and provocateur, his films have always betrayed the heart of a classicist. Directing Miracle at St. Anna, the biggest-budgeted mainstream movie yet about the experiences of African-American soldiers in World War II, doesn't phase the audacious Lee in the slightest. He opens the film in 1983 with the main character watching John Wayne in The Longest Day and responding to the Duke's outsized American-ness with quiet pride (the flip side of Public Enemy's assault on him in "Fight the Power"). Lee addresses the ghosts of both American movies and American history throughout the film's two-hour-and-fourty-minute running time, but what makes the movie work is his commitment to traditional notions of story and character. Miracle at St. Anna is the opposite of a polemic, it's a generous, old-fashioned entertainment.Some long films feel bloated because the director deliberates over the grand themes, but Miracle at St. Anna clocks in at 160 minutes simply because, like a great beach novel, it's chock-full of story. The elaborate -- but never confusing -- plot involves a ghost, Italian resistance fighters, a love triangle, racial prejudice, war atrocities, and priceless artifacts. The movie adopts a novelistic approach where the sequences play like chapters that each develop the characters and the various storylines simultaneously, without once confusing or boring the audience. Screenwriter and novelist James McBride deserves credit for the elegant structure, but Lee and his editor can take a bow for giving each sequence weight without hampering the film's flow. Thankfully, every aspect of the production is as spot-on as the structure: Terence Blanchard's score alternates between aching beauty and martial intensity, Matthew Libatique's cinematography is varied and engrossing, and Lee's compositions continually showcase his innate ability to express sensuality -- the man knows how to photograph people. Everybody involved gets a moment to stand out, but none of the individual excellence announces itself with signs of "Look at how important all of this is!" pretentiousness.
This is an unapologetically emotional, confident, and entertaining movie that is by turns funny, heartbreaking, shamelessly tearjerking, and nail-bitingly tense. The film could be mistaken for being nothing more than Oscar bait -- aggressively middle-brow fare that seems "important" simply because it tackles such weighty themes -- but Lee is far too idiosyncratic a filmmaker to strive for something as banal as that. Instead, Miracle at St. Anna feels exactly like the kind of film Spike Lee himself would enjoy watching, and the man does have excellent taste in movies. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
Cast
- Derek Luke - 2nd Staff Sergeant Aubrey Stamps
- Michael Ealy - Sergeant Bishop Cummings
- Laz Alonso - Corp. Hector Negron
- Omar Benson Miller - Private First Class Sam Train
- Valentina Cervi - Renata
