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Miracle at St. Anna

Has Spike Lee lost his way?
By PETER KEOUGH  |  October 1, 2008
1.5 1.5 Stars

miracleatstannainside.jpg

What is the Miracle at St. Anna? Maybe that a filmmaker capable of the eloquence of When the Levees Broke could make such an incoherent movie. Or maybe it’s the recollection of an incident by means of a flashback within a flashback within a flashback when none of those having the flashbacks could have had any of the experiences recalled. The proceedings begin in 1983, with Hector (Laz Alonso), a postal worker and war veteran, plugging a guy at his window with a German Luger. Investigators turn up a marble head in his apartment. Asked what’s going on, he says, “The Sleeping Man.” Maybe he’s referring to Spike Lee, who seems to have taken a snooze in this jumble of confused plotting and characters with random motivation, stereotypes who forget from moment to moment what cliché they’re supposed to be. Set in a Tuscan village that was the site of a Nazi massacre, Miracle at St. Anna is meant as a tribute to the unheralded African-American soldiers who fought in World War II, but it comes off as the work of a director who’s lost his way. 160 minutes | Boston Common + Fenway + Fresh Pond + Chestnut Hill + Suburbs

Related: Interview: Nicolas Cage, Dirty politics, Fest or famine?, More more >
  Topics: Reviews , Entertainment, Movies, World War II,  More more >
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ARTICLES BY PETER KEOUGH
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  •   REVIEW: BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS  |  November 24, 2009
    Nicolas Cage is at his best in Bad Lieutenant
  •   REVIEW: THE ROAD  |  November 24, 2009
    John Hillcoat doesn't stray from Cormac McCarthy's Road For those who found the Coen Brothers' adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men too lighthearted, John Hillcoat's relentlessly faithful version of the author's post-apocalyptic Pulitzer-winning novel might hit the spot.
  •   INTERVIEW: NICOLAS CAGE  |  November 24, 2009
    "When people like to label any kind of performance as over the top, I suggest that if you were to go to the Guggenheim and look at a Francis Bacon, would you call that over the top?"
  •   REVIEW: FANTASTIC MR. FOX  |  November 25, 2009
    In The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Wes Anderson excelled at telling adult stories with childlike whimsy. Telling children’s stories with adult whimsy is another matter.
  •   SWINE FEVER: AN EVENING WITH HUNTER S. THOMPSON  |  November 24, 2009
    Only Hunter S. Thompson could come up with a line like that; no one else had his knack for the near-Biblical proverb. Few writers outside of Madison Avenue or the New Testament can sum up a zeitgeist so cannily in a phrase.

 See all articles by: PETER KEOUGH

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