Miracle at St. Anna

I've always loved Spike Lee's work. He approaches film with a piercing imagination, shows a deft hand with the editor's knife and manages to wring the best out of his actors. In Miracle at St. Anna, I suppose Spike was attempting to make his Saving Private Tyrone, honoring the highly decorated 92nd Infantry Brigade, the first all-black combat unit during WWII. Too bad, but Spike lost focus somewhere along the line and fell short... too complicated, too long, too much meandering, but otherwise brilliant. In all fairness, I haven't read the James McBride novel that inspired the film.

Little Angelo is protected by 'Gigante Chocolato', the Chocolate Giant, played by Omar Benson Miller. Looking on is Pvt. Bishop Cummings (Michael Ealy).

I can imagine that some of the twists and turns in the story might ride smoother with the detail allowed in a literary treatment. If Spike's error was made in an attempt to keep too closely with the book, as an author I can somewhat forgive.

A Brooklyn postal clerk pulls a WWII vintage German Luger pistol from under his desktop and shoots dead a customer buying stamps. When police, with a inquisitive young journalist in tow, search the shooter's apartment, they find the head of a renaissance statue that once adorned a bridge in Florence, Italy, destroyed by the allies in 1944.

The aging postal clerk turns out to be Hector Negrone, a former member of the 92nd Infantry, 'Buffalo Soldiers', and what follows is the story of how Hector came to posses that precious artifact.

Flash back to the war; Hector's squad gets separated for the rest of their brigade after an ambush by the Germans at a river crossing scatters the 92nd. One of the four, Train, a mountain of a man, carries the head strapped to his side, a protective talisman, he believes. In a small abandoned farmhouse where the men plan to hide out, Train finds a young Italian boy trapped under some ruble. The boy, Angelo, calls Train Gigante Chocolatto--the chocolate giant.

And so the real story--Angelo's and Train's story--finally begins. The soldiers take the boy to a village where they are celebrating the departure of the German Army from the area. The men, despite their race, are well-received and cared for by the townsfolk. They meet partisans who have captured a German that the often incoherent boy seems to know.

Magical realism takes hold, unseen forces at work to save the boy and his Buffalo Soldier guardian angels.

I'd tell you more, but I'd have to make a really long story really short. This where Spike start wandering off the main line, spending too much time with the Italians and not enough with the Americans, except in flashbacks... lots of them. Lee also rode onto a number of sidetracks making racial points about the era. things that probably don't need to be said, or have been said so many times before. For this film, that sort of thing just seemed superfluous and distracting.

Near the end of the film, we're at Hector's pre-trial hearing for the murder of his Italian immigrant customer, a man about his own age. A mystery benefactor has hired some high-powered lawyer to represent Hector and pays off his two-million-dollar cash bail. In a scene oddly reminiscent ofThe Shawshank Redemption, when Red finds Andy and a Bahamian beach, Hector finds his benefactor drinking margaritas, sitting in a lounge chair on a Bahamian Beach.

Guess who?

It's worth seeing, despite the flaws. Spike Lee is too skilled for this film not to have its moments.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.0
Fat Laughing Buddhas