"In one of the first scenes in "Miracle at St. Anna," a black man watches John Wayne in "The Longest Day" on television, and whispers, 'Pilgrim, we fought for this country too,' a line that Lee himself wrote into James McBride's screenplay....

He also needed the right source material, which came along in McBride's 2002 book, a fictionalized account of four Buffalo Soldiers that was based on McBride's extensive research. On the heels of his 2006 commercial success, 'Inside Man,' Lee enlisted McBride to write the screenplay. McBride found his director to be very demanding. 'But he's very demanding of himself,' says the writer, who adds that Lee pushed him most of all to create 'multidimensional' characters, whether they were African American, Italian partisans or Nazi officers."

- Los Angeles Times, September 25, 2008


If Spike had cut, say, 15 minutes (including, as much as it pains me to say this, the John Leguizamo cameo with the UNBELIEVABLY HOT Italian woman straddling him... which led to the ridiculousness of the paper flying out of the window and right into Older Angelo's hands... cmon, Spike, cmon), this would have been a tight, focused, epic-scaled film...

In its current state, however, it's damn good... but then again, I'm not sure we need the 80's framework... that just pads the running time and tries to get us engaged in a mystery that I really didn't care about... as the setup went on and on, I kept waiting for the jump backward to 1944 so the actual story could begin...

... that said, I don't know what I would cut from the middle of the film. I would have, however, pulled back on the Train-Angelo stuff, only because it distracted from the story that I was really interested in, and that was the soldiers... but then again, how much to you cut back and not hurt the main story?

One sequence that definitely would NOT get cut is the one in the Louisiana diner... I thought that was great, and it ended perfectly, with the GREAT shot of our heroes in Tuscany, facing the camera, then slowly peeling off, one by one, until there's the reveal that they're looking at the propaganda posters... I thought that sequence was EXTREMELY well-done... that's when the film really gained some momentum to me...

And my God, the St. Anna's massacre... it got kinda goofy near the end of it with Angelo, his brother, and the Germans, but before that... wow...

But in addition to the goofy framing device, I also didn't need the silly-ass love triangle that kinda developed... yes, Valentina Cervi is hot, and it was nice to see her boobies, but still... the "mack vs. upstanding Negro" rivalry for her affections felt like it needed to go in another movie... it would have been perfectly fine for neither one of them to end up with her, as it really added nothing but time padding onto the film (and provided yet more ammunition for critics -- black and white, pro or not -- of Spike's treatment of female characters in his films)...

Performance-wise, I thought Derek Luke was outstanding... Laz pulled his weight as well... but I wasn't that enamored with Michael Ealy, or Omar Benson Miller, for that matter... every time he said "Boy," for some reason I flashed back to Michael Clarke Duncan's repeated use of "Boss" in The Green Mile...

I also had no problem with Terence Blanchard's score blanketing the film...

I hate to run so hot and cold about this film, because I really liked MOST of it a lot...


... also, shout-out to revered PTP favorite George Lucas, who is listed as a benefactor in the closing credits (and yes, we know he's planning on making a black WWII film)...
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"I want to be done playing this lady Nov. 5..." - Tina Fey