Spike Lee Needs A Miracle to Save "Miracle at St. Anna."

     Infamous Director Spike Lee has gone on record many times speaking out against war films and their depiction, or lack thereof, of black soldiers.  This past summer, he had a rather publicized verbal sparring match with Clint Eastwood on the subject of Eastwood’s World War II film, Flags of Our Fathers.  Now, Lee fights back with a war film of his own: Miracle at St. Anna.
       The film, based on James McBride’s novel of the same name, opens with a shooting at a New York City bank in 1983.  Hector Negron, an employee, shoots a customer seemingly without motivation.  A young journalist goes with the police team to Negron’s house and they find an old statue head.  As the journalist questions Negron about the artifact, we’re transported back to World War II via Negron’s flashback.  A group of minority soldiers get separated from their mostly black unit, and trapped in an Italian village, surrounded by Nazis.
       Spike Lee has never been afraid to confront racial stereotypes head-on, but they’re often set apart from the narrative of the film reflexively- but not outright condemning them.  In Do the Right Thing or 25th Hour, characters directly address the audience to speak their mind about racial and ethnic stereotypes.  But in Miracle at St. Anna, Lee integrates these ethnic clichés into his characters, almost embracing them.  The Italians are absurdly superstitious, the Nazis are ridiculously cartoonish villains, and the blacks are brash and disagreeable, except for the fat, dumb one- who is infantilized beyond compare- and who takes care of a little Italian boy Angelo. If this were a character in Flags of Our Fathers, Lee would most certainly be calling foul.
        The acting is bad, the screenplay is awful, and the film is often unintentionally hilarious.  Angelo calls his caretaker a "chocolate giant" and suggests using his tail to lift a heavy piece of wood.  During one of the few genuinely interesting moments in the film, a Nazi woman (of course with a giant swastika in the background) broadcasts a message to the black unit as they try to cross a river.  She asks why they fight for a country that treats them as second class citizens and, trying to convince them to surrender, offers them food (fried chicken and biscuits of course) before offering them her "two biscuits."  Its laughable.
       Besides the book-end structure, in which you’ll have fun playing "Spot That Cameo!" in the present day, the film clunkily moves back and forth in time, leaving the audience unsure whether we’re in the present or past.  Or should I say the past of the past, or the past?  Flashbacks within flashbacks that are done incorrectly are very confusing. All this plays out to the sounds of a ridiculously over-bearing and distracting score.
       Of course Lee is trying to say something.  Miracle at St. Anna is furiously edifying, without ever saying much other than blacks have suffered- and and continue to suffer- prejudices.  But Lee has to know that the target audience for this film already understands this.  Yet, he still feels the need to throw in a little flashback where a hamburger-joint owning hick won’t serve the black soldiers, despite a group of krauts sipping away on their milkshakes at a nearby booth.  The flashback is not only unnecessary, it literally adds nothing to the film other than Lee’s self-righteous didacticism.
       Miracle at St. Anna is over-stuffed and overblown.  It’s unnecessarily long, pushing up against three hours.  This very easily could have been a tighter- and likely better- film, if the screenplay were written by someone with experience, rather than the novelist McBride.  It’s a rambling mash-up of genres and styles that barely work and certainly never feel really cohesive.  It tries to be epic, yet personal.  The film is steeped in sentiment but void of heart.
       But the biggest inconsistency of all?  The film is made by perhaps one of the greatest living American directors- but you can definitely skip this one.