- From Touchstone Pictures and A Spike Lee Joint comes the powerful and uplifting World War II epic MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA, directed by acclaimed filmmaker Spike Lee (THE INSIDE MAN). Stationed in Tuscany, Italy, four members of the U.S. Army’s all-black 92nd Infantry Division, the Buffalo Soldiers, are trapped behind enemy lines after one of them risks his life to save a traumatized Italian boy. Separ
From award-winning filmmaker Spike Lee comes Miracle At St. Anna, the story of four black American soldiers who are members of the US Army as part of the all-black 92nd Buffalo Soldier division stationed in Tuscany, Italy during WWII. They experience the tragedy and triumph of war as they find themselves trapped behind enemy lines and separated from their unit after one of them risks his life to save an Italian boy. Praised as The best war movie since Saving Private Ryan (Pat Collins, WWOR TV) and One of the year s best (Ben Lyons, E!), and filled with epic battle sequences and action, the film explore deeply inspiring, powerful story drawn from true history, that transcends national boundaries, race and class to touch the goodness within us all. Now even more revealing with exclusive Blu-ray bonus features that bring you even deeper into the world of these unsung heroes.
Every major American filmmaker has a war movie inside them. After the twin triumphs of When the Levees Broke and Inside Man, his biggest box office hit, Spike Lee puts his distinctive stamp on World War II. Though Miracle at St. Anna begins and ends in 1983, most of the action takes place in 1944. The segregation of the time leads to the Army’s African-American 92nd Infantry Division. In Italy, four of these Buffalo Soldiers, Sergeants Stamps (Antwone Fisher‘s Derek Luke) and Bishop (Barbershop‘s Michael Ealy), Corporal Hector (Jarhead‘s Laz Alonso), and sweet, superstitious Private Train (The Express‘s Omar Benson Miller), get separated from their unit while fighting the Germans. On the way to higher ground, Train rescues a boy from the rubble. With nine-year-old Angelo (newcomer Matteo Sciabordi) in tow, the soldiers secure shelter in a Tuscan town, where they band together with the villagers, including lovely English speaker Renata (Artemisia‘s Valentina Cervi), nurse the delusional boy back to health (he has an imaginary playmate named Arturo), and prepare for the next attack. Like Inside Man, Miracle marks one of the few times Lee has drafted an outsider to write the script, in this case bestselling author James McBride, who adapts from his novel. The combination of sensibilities results in a film that alternates, sometimes awkwardly, between cynicism and sentimentality. Tonal irregularities aside, Miracle at St. Anna pays overdue tribute to the 15,000 men who fought for freedom in a country that showed them greater respect than their nation of origin. –Kathleen C. Fennessy
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December 19, 2010
#1
High hopes for St. Anna,
I had wanted to like this movie so much. As much as I wanted to like Windtalkers. Both had potential to be really great but were unable to rise above an absolutely juvenile and cheesy script. I am an avid WWII buff and I give alot of license to war movies and don’t pick them apart for their accuracy or lack there of but this one not only insults the viewer but the legacy of the 92nd/Buffalo.
The Good : Absolutely beautiful cinematography. If you could mute the sound (dialogue) one might think they were watching a pretty decent WWII era movie. Battle scenes were shot well. Uniforms were pretty dead on accurate and the weapons were accurate although Thompson SMGs and 1911 .45 caliber HGs did not have 100 round clips……
The Bad : Awful and embarrassing dialogue embellished with overacting which made it almost comical. Obligatory nudity. Soldiers using language and phrases that would be used only today. A German louspeaker that blares Axis Sally’s propaganda for several square miles over the battlefield and is audible to all. Fragmented story with a total lack of cohesion (like this review). My favorite is the commanding white officer (Nokes?) stating that the Germans were going to cause a race riot by piping in the propaganda. I think that those valiant soldiers were more interested in staying alive and protecting their comrades than starting a race riot in Italy under fire. But then again this shows the mentality of Spike Lee and the writer.
The Ugly : All white officers and soldiers portrayed as bigoted haters. In one instance the commanding officer refuses to believe members of the 92nd crossed the river so does not send supporting artillery strikes. His reasoning for this is “He is lying”.
This same commanding officer condescendingly orders a black soldier to get him water. The black soldier spits into the canteen before giving it to white officer. Not only does this lower the mentality of the movie several notches but also slanders the memory of those brave men of the 92nd/Buffalo that fought for their country.
This movie had potential, unfortunately it was executed by someone who was unable to deliver. It is filled with contemporary language, modern topics of discussion, poor acting, and endless preaching about the evils of America. Spike Lee had scolded Clint Eastwood for not having any African Americans in Iwo Jima and had wanted him to rewrite history. Well, Spike has done that with this movie.
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|December 19, 2010
#2
A gawdawful mess, compounded with racist stereotypes,
The bloated, convoluted WWII flick makes no sense whatsoever. Nothing that is happening ever makes sense militarily or tactically, and the plot is silly nonsense.
For none of the above reasons, however, would I bother to review this dreck. What greatly troubles me is how Spike Lee, a black man, depicts the black soldiers in this movie: cowardly, undisciplined, mutinous, hypersexual, superstitious, ignorant, contentious, sloppy, etc. What gives? If a white man had made this movie and drawn the black characters this way, he would be widely derided as a racist, and rightly so. Why in the world would Spike Lee perpetuate these sorts of racist stereoptypes about soldiers of his own race???
This garbage deserves swift oblivion, and Spike Lee needs to do some serious soul-searching.
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|December 19, 2010
#3
Painstakingly accurate, actually.,
As it happens, the US 92nd Infantry Division was a dumping ground for incompetent white officers. The general staff operated on the assumption that these imcompetents would do the least damage, overall, commanding Negro soldiers, who were generally tolerated by the white man’s army only at the insistence of the Roosevelt Administration. The high percentage of bad reviews this excellent and historically accurate movie has received has little to do with the movie itself, and everything to do with the persistence of institutional and structural racism in the US, because this movie is, as I say, painstakingly accurate. It is worth noting that the full range of racial attitudes are depicted here among every group. For instance, a second white company commander informs the divisional commander of why these men were isolated on the far side of a river their own company commander insists they didn’t cross. White MPs intervene on behalf of the black soldiers who were denied service at a cafe in Mississippi, to no avail. A German officer stops a man under his command from shooting a wounded and unarmed black American. The black soldiers in this movie also represent the full range of men serving in the 92nd; just as white soldiers were not all exemplary, neither was every black man heroic simply because he was black. But this isn’t just a war movie, it is also a complex mystery, which also makes it enigmatic to the typical Clint Eastwood/John Wayne fan. If you are a white person considering this movie, you must suspend most of your assumptions first, and accept the accuracy of this movie, even though you do not wish to believe that it is accurate. If you can’t do that, you will dismiss it as nonsense.
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