>I haven't seen it. It might suck. But many of these reviews
>talk about:
>
>a) Spike shoving the horrors of war in our face

The violence really isn't all that graphic or frequent so I'd have to disagree

>b) Spike's war movie being too long

It's long but it doesn't really drag too much

>c) Spike's ambition being too high

Sounds like the book was pretty ambitious as well

>d) Spike trying to outdo other great war flicks

Never got this feeling while watching it. A lot of it is quite subdued imo

>e) Spike's vendetta against Clint Eastwood

HA!

>Is it just me, or do none of these comments (a through d, at
>least) sound any different than other great war movie? Long,
>unflinching on the horrors of war, wildly ambitious... aren't
>these the traits of war films?
>
>I could be wrong. I might agree with a through d at the end of
>the day... but a number of these reviews are dismissive and
>didn't very eloquently tell me much I didn't already know. I
>expected it to be long, I expected it to show horrors, I
>expected it to be ambitious, I expected it to have discussions
>of race, I expected a big Terence Blanchard score draped over
>everything. These are what one should expect of a Spike Lee
>war flick, imo.
>
>AND IT MIGHT SUCK. I'm not copping pleas for Spike, who is far
>from perfect. But I've read one too many casually dismissive
>reviews that seem to imply, "LOLZ @ Spike, he can't play with
>the big boys."

Pretty much. The only real gripe I have is the lack of focus at times. It was the same problem Spike had with She Hate Me. But in this case its like a double-edged sword. The critics who say his ambition was too high would probably be the same ones complaining if the focus was stritcly about the Buffalo Soldiers saying it was nothing knew that they hadn't seen in any other war flick. I appreciated the ambition in this one a lot more than I did in She Hate Me. It's handled much better even if it still has it's problems with the pacing.