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Lee's War Picture Bold But Muddled

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By CHRISTY LEMIRE

The Associated Press

Published: September 25, 2008

Updated:

In Spike Lee's long and eclectic career, "Miracle at St. Anna" is easily his most technically ambitious film.

After acclaimed character dramas ("Malcolm X"), some ill-fated comedies ("Bamboozled") and even a documentary or two ("4 Little Girls"), Lee takes on a big, old-fashioned war picture. It's hard not to appreciate the fact that, after a quarter-century of making movies, he has chosen this time to leap so boldly away from his comfort zone.

But he might not have been ready for the enormity of such a project. "Miracle at St. Anna" is wildly unfocused in terms of tone and, at two hours and 40 minutes, it is unjustifiably long. Lee didn't write the script - that's the work of James McBride, who based the screenplay on his novel - but he didn't rein in his writer, either.

"Miracle" tells of the men of the 92nd Infantry Division, black troops who served in Italy during World War II and were known as Buffalo Soldiers.

In following four soldiers trapped behind enemy lines in Tuscany (Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso and Omar Benson Miller), Lee jumps from visceral battle scenes to intimate drama to lighthearted comedy.

Regardless of the situation, though, he smothers everything, as usual, in the distractingly horn-heavy score of his longtime collaborator, composer and jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard. Lee undermines himself with such bombast at every turn.

Beginning in 1983 New York, but mostly told in flashback, "Miracle at St. Anna" follows earnest leader Staff Sgt. Aubrey Stamps (Luke), smooth-talking Sgt. Bishop Cummings (Ealy), Puerto Rican translator Cpl. Hector Negron (Alonso) and sweet, lumbering Pfc. Sam Train (Miller). They're sent to cross the Serchio River and are not expected to make it - they're meant to get blown up to ferret out the enemy. But once they do survive, they take in an injured boy (Matteo Sciabordi) and hide out in a Tuscan village, where the locals are initially wary of these heavily armed Americans but slowly warm to them.

Lee coaxes some strong performances from his large cast, namely Luke as the stoic voice of reason, Valentina Cervi as a villager who befriends the soldiers and Pierfrancesco Favino as an Italian partisan leader known as The Butterfly.

MOVIE REVIEW

Miracle at St. Anna **

MOVIE BOARD RATING: R; strong war violence, profanity, nudity and some sexual content

STARS: Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso and Omar Benson Miller

DIRECTOR: Spike Lee

LOCATION: See movie times, Page 9, for local showtimes.

PLOT SUMMARY: Four Buffalo Soldiers are trapped behind enemy lines in World War II.

RUNNING TIME: 160 minutes

ON THE WEB: miracleat stanna.movies.go.com

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