Miracle at St. Anna

Synopsis

Miracle at St. Anna chronicles 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 World War II. Directed by Spike Lee (Inside Man)., this film is from a screenplay written by James McBride, the author of a novel of the same name. The story revolves around a small group of soldiers who find themselves behind enemy lines, trapped and separated from their unit after one soldier risks his own life to save a little Italian boy.

Review

Miracle at St. Anna is a heartfelt film that displays the goodness and evil in everyone, from the Italians, Americans and the Germans. This movie really tries to strip away what we commonly know about WWII and portray other elements of the war as well as the atrocities. There is also a nice authenticity to the movie because it uses subtitles for all non-English speaking scenes. Everyone spoke in his or her native tongue. So be prepared to get your read on. Miracle will no doubt pull at your emotions in some scenes and fester up some anger in others, but overall the film is a good one.

The trailer for Miracle captured my attention and I just knew it would be a really good movie. Hmmm… it wasn’t as great as I thought it would be, but it's still worth seeing on the big screen. I was restless and bored for certain parts of the movie. It could be because Miracle is 160 minutes long. There's a lot of jibber jabber that was meaningless and didn’t add to the story. However, the subplots weren’t too bad and all were tied together well.

The main plot begins in 1983 with a middle aged postal worker who looks up at a customer who asks to purchase a stamp. He immediately recognizes the customer and clearly shows contempt for and without hesitation, he just shoots him dead. The postal worker is Corporal Hector Negron (Laz Alonso, This Christmas). No one knows why he did it, or more importantly, no one seems to care how he got a loaded pistol into the post office, seemingly waiting for someone to try and jack him for his stamps. My dad worked as a vet and worked for the postal service, but I don’t think he was armed and waiting for something to pop off. A little bit of a stretch.

Authorities search Hector’s home and background and find an old ancient missing artifact from Italy that could have sold on the art black market for $5 million. A young man from the Daily News questions Hector. He wants to know why Hector has this statue and what made him shoot a man in cold blood. This mystery jumps the movie back to 1944 with a young Hector going through the trenches of war with his unit of black soldiers from the 92nd Infantry Division—known as the “Buffalo Soldiers.” They are stationed in Tuscany, Italy during World War II. Four of them including Hector get separated from their unit because of Private Sam Train (Omar Benson Miller, Things We Lost in the Fire) opts to save a little lonely Italian boy named Angelo Torancelli (Matteo Sciabordi).

One of the best actors is the little boy. He is funny, endearing, loving and I really felt for the boy and I guess so did Sam, because with his doofus acting self, he takes the boy under his wing and I swear he believes the boy is his? What the smurf? Don’t ask me. Sam is a BIG and TALL brotha who acts all kinds of stupid. How his big Warren Sapp looking body got into the army is beyond me. His character irritated me the most. For a movie that should be a serious drama, this one also has some goofy humor in it. At first, Sam made me laugh with his “Oh lawd, save me Jesus” talk but after while he became sooo annoying with his forced country accent and just stupid look on his face. Sam also carries around the head of a statue, rubbing on it like a genie was going to pop out. Of course this stone head is what authorities found in Hector’s apartment. Sam rubs this thing for good luck.

“Feel that magic. All you have to do is believe.” The magical negro.

I do appreciate this film showing blacks fighting for a country back in a time when the country didn’t fight for or love blacks. There’s a scene where some of the black soldiers try to get served in a diner and they were treated as less than human, but the German POW’s were sitting in a booth, chilling while getting their grub on. Ain't right...Ain't right. I'm smh (shaking my head).

Another issue I have is, I think Spike could have done a much better job at showing the four main characters as less stereotypical blacks. WHY Spike??? Come on now. First, there is Sergeant Bishop Cummings (Michael Ealy, Barbershop) who has a gold tooth and a stocking cap on his head and all he is worried about is smacking bellies with this local Italian woman named Renata (Valentina Cervi, War and Peace). And about Renata, she first came off strong, intelligent and lady-like. Paleeeasee, all it took was corny Bishop to step to her and give her that sly look and slick smile while spitting all kind of jive talk to her to have her lifting her skirt up. Hussy! I mean, I appreciate the realness here, but John Wayne’s soldiers never got their groove on by jive talking through a gold tooth.

At least Derek Luke—who played the the squad leader—was a respectable dude. So was Hector.

Now to war. Yes, there are some battle scenes in this movie, but understand the movie is not about a lot of gun battles. It’s a character movie, and you’re going to meet Germans, Italians, and Americans all dealing with social issues in their time: Facism, Nazism, genocide, racism, love, sex, etc. The cast of characters is pretty big, but it’s easy to track who’s who and guess how this film is going to wrap up. Their interactions can be drawn out early on but when this movie picks up, all the dialogue is important. Just understand that you are not going to have Saving Private Ryan firefights the whole movie.

Let me take a moment and talk about the score. For some who are unfamiliar with what the score is—it’s the music. The music throughout the movie drove me bananas. There was no need for music in every scene. And some of the music just sounded dopey. That tappity tap military music that sounds recycled from John Wayne movies. For a moment I was thinking if the movie was supposed to be a comedy too. Just non-stop. I have no idea why.

• When there were serious scenes with straight dialogue—we get distracting music on top of it.
• When there were sad scenes—music—and it ain’t even an appropriate type sometimes.
• When there were fight scenes—music. Now these scenes usually can use some music, but shouldn’t the music in movies help us understand the importance of scenes, or the escalation of action?

I wanted to yell ”STOP THE MUSIC”. I swear the score was a movie in itself. I checked to see if maybe I just had some headphones or something on, because this movie was jamming some tunes for nearly 160 minutes. Couldn’t a brotha have toned it down a bit? This wasn’t Mo’ Better Blues.

The ending is touching, but there is one character that comes off as a black Ricardo Montalban. He’s the dude Mr. Roarke from the old seventies TV series Fantasy Island. Why Spike would throw some cheesy character in the mix is beyond me. I just sat and rolled my eyeballs. I need reality people! And, what is the miracle? Seriously, did I miss it? What is the miracle? If you know, please tell a sista. But the 160 minutes is worth a try.

My Rating ~ 3 Reels

Audience Rating (What's Yours?)