Miracle at St. Anna

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Miracle at St. Anna

58% Liked It
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Miracle at St. Anna

John Turturro, D.B. Sweeney, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso, Naomi Campbell, Derek Luke, Omar Benson Miller, Matteo Sciabordi, John Leguizamo, Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Set in 1944 Italy, the story of four black American soldiers who get trapped in a Tuscan village during WWII.

Id: 10959002

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Miracle at St. Anna Recent Reviews
  • flixsterman
    August 21, 2009
    flixsterman
    2 hours and 40 minutes is a long time to endure a barrage of one-dimensional characters. Unlike other recent war films that vividly capture the chaos and mayhem of battle, Miracle at St. Anna seems contrived and overly scripted. This isn't combat through the eyes of sold...( read more)iers, this is a perception of combat through the eyes of a director.

    As much as I admire Spike Lee, and as much as I really (REALLY) wanted to like this film, I just couldn't. This one is far too cliche to be taken seriously.
  • JDFortuneFan
    July 5, 2009
    JDFortuneFan
    The power of this film for me was lost in the inaccuracies of the styling and slang language used by some of the characters. The slang kept me from believing it was 1944. Aside from this loss of power, the plot was great and the characters of Train and Angelo were superb. The ...( read more)film is much too long and could have played better if cut by forty minutes or more.
  • MovieGeek13
    April 30, 2009
    MovieGeek13
    Spike Lee shot himself in the foot when he criticized Clint Eastwood's two-film Iwo Jima masterpiece for not showing the role of African Americans during WW2. First off, the Japanese army didn't have any black soldiers, and second, Flags of Our Fathers does talk about how minori...( read more)ties were mistreated at this time, despite their contributions to the war effort.
    But Miracle at St Anna really is a great film, nowhere near as good as Eastwood's films, but still worthy of attention. It depicts in harrowing detail how all black soldiers were seen pretty much as Operation Human Shield throughout much of the war. Even the Germans were able to point that out to them. Lee also shows the division of black soldiers between themselves. There's a great scene where one soldier flirts with an Italian lady, and another onlooking soldier says, "People like him have set our people back almost 400 years." A little on the nose, but the line gets the job done.
    Lee has always been a very ambitious filmmaker, and here, he tries to cover the battle from all angles: the peasant Italians, the Italian renegades, the Nazis, the white Americans, and of course the black Americans. At times, the film seems to wander on tangeants, but the emotional impact that Lee is aiming for is never lost. Even as cheesy as the last sequence is, it puts the title into a lot of perspective.
  • rebvodka042099
    April 28, 2009
    rebvodka042099
    This has got to be the greatest disappointment when it comes to Spike Lee. For me, he is one of the most brilliant directors alive -he's offered cinema a plethora of masterpieces, but with Miracle at St. Anna...he misses the mark by far.

    The performances are excellent -n...( read more)o arguments there. The beginning and ending also great -just a touch of bitter satisfaction. The cultural significance also worth paying attention to and it hits several humanity chords in each person -especially the ambush scene at the end and the scene at the church.

    Despite all those, the film is literally endless. I saw it on DVD and had to stop it and resume it over the course of several days. For those who watched it in cinema it was probably a Golgotha to sustain through. Several elements could have easily been left out and still making sense. It's a movie that is self-righteous and self-important, it's extremely pointless and at the end it doesn't leave you with many things to work with. The emotional depth of some of the characters is lacking and several racial slurs are way too pretentious.

    I only rate this movie highly because of Spike Lee's direction and several components that if viewed separately are worth it.
  • irisheyes686
    April 4, 2009
    irisheyes686
    It was a little long, but it was a good story. I loved the relationship between the little boy and the solider. The ending was perfect.
  • erikggrep
    November 12, 2009
    erikggrep
    In World War II there were heroes and miracles in Tuscan, Italy. In December 1983, when the elder Hector Negron is interviewed by a reporter after shooting a man at the post office and his wardrobe revealed the long-lost head of the Primavera statue, he recalls his role in the Af...( read more)rican-American 92nd Division "Buffalo Soldiers" that took safety in a small Italian village while they were caught behind enemy lines and surrounded by German troops. With him and three other soldiers is the eight-year-old Angelo Torancelli, a lone survivor of the St. Anna massacre.

    Directed by Spike Lee, Miracle At St. Anna features superior acting performances from the following cast:
    1.) Derek Luke (2nd Staff Sgt. Aubrey Stamps)
    2.) Michael Ealy (Sgt. Bishop Cummings)
    3.) Laz Alonso (Corp. Hector Negron)
    4.) Omar Benson Miller (Pvt. First Class Sam Train)
    5.) Matteo Sciabordi (Angelo Torancelli)

    Seeing Miracle At St. Anna gave me an excellent impression that a troubled racial minority could show their nation their strength in the military when they fight in Nazi-occupied Europe, even though they would experience growing prejudice within the unit. But there is always help within the Italian partisans, though a traitor could foreshadow a key betrayal later on. The action and war violence here moved me a lot as if they were real. I hear of the film's controversy over the portrayal of the massacre's depiction, but I know it's not much of a big deal - Spike Lee was only using history while it was based on the James McBride novel. And I don't find it all that bad, right? An epic story that I'd call it the BEST MOVIE EVER in the war genre definitely goes down in history as a film classic - so to heck with the majority of critics who disliked it.
  • Brittani299
    November 9, 2009
    Brittani299
    Thought that it was going to be good but it ended up being long and kinda boring
  • jfd78
    November 5, 2009
    jfd78
    Heart-wrenching, tear-jerking tale about doing the right thing...even in the worst of situations.
  • voodoomarijuana
    November 2, 2009
    voodoomarijuana
    D.B, sweeney is always a treat for me.
  • SC007
    October 31, 2009
    SC007
    Overall, the film is ok. The performances by this ensemble is really good. It kind of reminded me of films like We Were Soldiers and Inglorious Bastards. Also the ending scene reminded me of the ending scene of The Shawshank Redemption. The main negative of the film is the pacing...( read more) which is completely off.
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