Miracle at St. Anna (Spike Lee, 2008)

[colinr0380]

It is quite worrying to read in all the reviews so far that Lee's film makes the mawkish and manipulative Saving Private Ryan seem restrained and austere!

But you never know that could be the point - of criticising those kinds of qualities in films by highlighting them in yours? Like a Second World War Bamboozled? Or am I giving Lee too much credit? It does seem strange to try to 'redress the balance' of stereotyped portrayals and even complete absences of portrayal by apparently filling your own film with cliched archetypal characters.

[dx23]

Spike Lee film angers Italy's surviving partisans. Oh, the irony!

[Cinephrenic]

Spike Lee is a rascist asshole. I wouldn't be surprised if his objective was to distort history to promote the need for more black people in his movies.

[Antoine Doinel]

I saw this tonight and its an absolute trainwreck. During the whole Lee vs. Eastwood debate, I was hoping Lee's film would really one up Eastwood's duo of WWII pictures which I frankly found pretty pedestrian at best, but good God Lee doesn't just throw up an airball, he's not even on the court. I can't remember the last time I saw a film that was so goddamn corny. Spreading over a way too long two hours and forty minutes, and mixing a WWII film with a revenge flick and a whole lot of mystical mumbo jumbo, Lee doesn't find a stereotype he doesn't like, but he still manages to wrap the whole thing up with the most sickeningly sweet ending this side of a Hallmark card. We get some Eye-talians, Cher-mans and a bunch of ignorant whiteys but no actual characters beyond one dimension (we even, bafflingly, get a Magical Negro). We also get plenty of Lee's now tired tics just so you know you're watching A Spike Lee Joint, including those double edits of the same shot and admiration of well endowed white women. But at least he keeps the dolly shot at home this time.

Everything about this film absolutely fails - editing, directing, story, plot, and the score by Terence Blanchard is synthetic concoction of dramatic, forgettable cues. Oh yeah, and if anyone can tell me what the point of John Leguizamo's one minute scene was for the film, I would love to know.

There were only two things I liked about this film. Derek Luke's incredible performance and the twenty second shot/sequence that unfolds from the first still released from the film.

Somewhere in California, Clint Eastwood is laughing himself to sleep.

[exte]

You're like the first person to review it here. I'm sure Eastwood laughed himself to sleep the night of the first episode knowing he would never even have to see this film to get a better angle on him... It's so sad that this was even bankrolled, if it is that bad. I mean, they let him set himself up... Why?