Miracle at St. Anna

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Contains scenes of brilliance, interrupted by scenes that meander. There is too much, too many characters, too many subplots. But there is so much here that is powerful that it should be seen no matter its imperfections.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Man, oh, man, much of the dialogue is so heavy, and heavy-handed, that you can see fine actors such as Derek Luke and Michael Ealy buckle under the weight. Clearly, Lee fell in love with McBride's words and couldn't bear to cut them, even when the visuals made those words redundant.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

For all his excesses and wrong turns, Lee has made a grown-up movie with an adult sense of loss and an adult sense of hope. He may be addicted to broad flourishes, but he has the big emotions to back them up.

Film Threat Stina Chyn

So think of it this way: Miracle at St. Anna is a Spike Lee joint that possesses a European texture in the vein of Guillermo Del Toro and Jean Pierre-Jeunet. Imaginative, thought-provoking, and intense.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Miracle at St. Anna is overlong and poorly focused. It tends to meander, the military context is not well established, and too much time is spent on interaction with underdeveloped secondary characters.

NPR Bob Mondello

Even in a film that clocks in at a quasi-epic 2 hours and 40 minutes, that's just too much narrative. And matters aren't helped by the fact that Lee, who has never staged battle sequences before, hasn't quite got the rhythms or camera angles right.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Half the time I wasn't sure what Lee was going for in terms of tone, or style, or focus. It was a tricky assignment to begin with, because McBride's novel, and his screenplay, is part socio-historical corrective, part magical-realist folklore, part wartime procedural.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

It is in the fragile bonds that form between the black soldiers and the Italian villagers that Miracle at St. Anna breaks free of its own grandiosity and tells a grounded, moving, human story. Not a miracle by any means, but an earthy inquiry into death, duty, friendship and honor. What we’ve always wanted from war movies.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Aspires to be epic, but mostly it's just unfocused, sprawling and badly in need of editing.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Of course the experiences and sacrifices of black troops, which were so often overlooked, should be represented and honored. But because Lee underestimates our desire to do so, the movie that follows doesn't do them justice.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

Lee is not an action director, and the movie often feels like it was made in the 1940s rather than set then.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Lee's framing device - which ends with a head-scratching fantasy - doesn't work. At. All.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Throughout, Terence Blanchard's score swells and sweeps, reminding us, at every moment, what we're supposed to feel. If only we knew what we were supposed to think of this trite mess.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

A picture that's dramatically compelling in some places and plodding and didactic in others.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The film collapses because Lee can't sew these vignettes into a seamless tapestry. He's more interested in getting even than he is in getting it right.

TV Guide Ken Fox

This is first Lee's first attempt at a war epic, but it feels like it's his very first film: What should have been an eloquent answer to the likes of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood -- with whom Lee justly took to task over the total absence of any black soldiers in "The Flags Of Our Fathers" -- is instead a patchy war-time drama.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Miracle at St. Anna is not work of outrage or joy. It's something distressingly new for the filmmaker: a work of obligation. It feels like a movie Lee made in order to say he did it.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

It's all too much and too little: a history lesson in institutional racism that falls into character cliches, a human drama that gets lost in melodramatic detours, a war movie put together by a fan rather than a filmmaker.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Clocking in at 160 minutes, this interminable movie comes across like a rough cut. Perhaps Lee believed its length would give it gravitas. The opposite is true.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Staff (Not credited)

Miracle plays like "School Daze" transplanted to the European front, with the token militant, the token uplift-the-race type, and the token buffoon all marching inexorably toward Checkpoint Irony.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Miracle isn't powerful, it's muddled and diffuse.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Odd too, for a film that wants to correct impression anyone had as to the abilities of black U.S. soldier in combat, are the ethnic cliches about Italians and Germans, to say nothing of rednecks.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

When Lee isn't doing cinematic somersaults or mining for injustice, he doesn't seem to know where to put the camera. The logistics of the plot make no sense, and he has nothing to sell but the theme of our common humanity--in which, on the evidence, I don't think he believes.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Pedestrian and awkward, this film is a disappointment not only in comparison with Lee's earlier epic, the underrated " Malcolm X," but also in comparison with another film with similar aims, Rachid Bouchareb's "Days of Glory."

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Overblown and unconvincing, the director's bright, poppy style clashing with the grim subject matter.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

The movie winds up a casualty of schmaltzy, patronizing sentiment on the one hand and overweening ambition on the other.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The first and most honest thing to say about Miracle at St. Anna is that it's an awful mess.

Variety Todd McCarthy

This is a sloppy stew in which the ingredients of battle action, murder mystery, little-kid sentiment and history lesson don't mix well.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

And for all Lee's ballyhoo about racial stereotyping, one might expect him to adopt a less hackneyed approach to his portrayals of Italians and women.

Village Voice Scott Foundas

You may begin to wonder if Lee really initiated this project or if it only fell into his hands after Roberto Benigni proved unavailable.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Given the importance of that subject, the real mystery of Mr. Lee's movie is why it's so diffuse, dispirited, emotionally distanced and dramatically inert.