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Set in 1944 Italy, the film tells the story of four black American soldiers who get trapped in a Tuscan village during WWII after one of them risks his life to save an Italian boy.
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.
Miracle makes a bid for epic status, but Lee throws in more elements - including murder mystery and supernatural fantasy - than the narrative can stand. The two big battle scenes are impressively staged, but the action in between sprawls and stumbles.
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.
Overwrought, overproduced, overbusy and overlong, Miracle at St. Anna finally suffers from the worst filmmaking sin of all: the failure of trust, in the story and the audience.
Lee clearly has magical realism, fable, and historical enormity on the brain, and even though he stuffs the film with everything but the proverbial kitchen sink, his ultimate point is anyone's guess
Lee is a filmmaker who, through talent, accomplishment, and a constant working of the refs in the Hollywood system, has earned autonomy over his films. I'm all for artistic freedom, but here he could have used a bit of oversight.