World War II flick is anything but a miracle

Spike Lee takes a step backward

An open letter to director Spike Lee:

Dear Spike,

So, we're just gonna forget 2006, huh? We're gonna forget about all the good progress you made that year with the one-two punch of the still-awesome heist thriller "Inside Man" and the powerful Katrina documentary (and my favorite movie that year) "When The Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts"? You're gonna forget all that and go back to being Spike, huh?

If you haven't guessed already, I just saw your new film "Miracle at St. Anna," a movie whose biggest miracle is that it found a distributor and is being released today. I just have one question: how could you screw up the story (adapted from James McBride's novel) of four black GIs who hide out in a Tuscan village while Nazis swarm the Italian countryside in World War II?

For starters, there's the cockamamie dialogue. I knew something was up when the film begins in Harlem in 1983, where an old black man (Laz Alonso) watches some John Wayne war movie on TV and says, ever-so-solemnly, "Pilgrim, we fought for this country, too." It doesn't let up from there, as the dialogue often bounces between earnest bromides and snappy machine-gun patter.

This old man later gets detained for killing someone with a German Luger at his post-office job -- what he was doing with a gun? Well, he does work at the post office! As he eventually trips into his memories of being a young soldier named Hector, fighting in the black-and-proud 92nd Infantry Division, I begin to wonder whether you're playing this movie for lighthearted fun instead of the serious war flick I assumed it would be. Most of the characters are too goofy to be in an actual war flick -- or in an actual war.

Along with Hector, there's Bishop (Michael Ealy), a smooth-talking, light-skinned sergeant with both a chip on his shoulder and an attitude problem. (He also has a gold tooth. Classy.) He mostly butts heads -- and fights for the affections of a hot Italian chick (Valentina Cervi) -- with the darker-skinned Stamps (Derek Luke), the leader who often stops to remind the audience how hard it was being black in the '40s with grand monologues (furiously heightened by longtime Lee composer Terence Blanchard's thundering score). Rounding out this quartet is Train (Omar Benson Miller), the big, simple-minded private who befriends a little Italian boy (Matteo Sciabordi) after he saves the boy from peril. (By the way, the boy calls him "Chocolate Giant." Oh yes.)

The weak characters (and weaker portrayals -- whaddya do, Spike, tell 'em to camp it up?) just make up part of the movie's overall awfulness. There are other things, too!

Why did you feel that a war movie must be 160 minutes long, Spike? Scenes just prattle on and on. Flashbacks fall on top of flashbacks. And then there are those scenes that don't have anything to do with the story.

I can't believe this is the movie you were willing to get in a fight with Clint Eastwood over. Eastwood directed "Flags of Our Fathers" and the even-better "Letters From Iwo Jima," two WWII movies with the utmost respect and seriousness. (This is The Greatest Generation we're talking about here!)

I must admit you did have 30 to 40 minutes of good material in the middle. But, just when you began to have me in your corner, you turn around and give me some whacked-out moment, like the too-trite-for-words ending that caused the couple next to me to start giggling. They were giggling, Spike!

You know, Spike, I've tried to be down with you no matter what. I defended you when people said you were going off the deep end as a filmmaker. I defended you when you kept shooting your mouth off at the most inopportune times. Man, I even defended "Girl 6"! But I can't do it no more.

The sad part? It didn't have to be this way. In 2006, you showed you could make movies, both fiction and nonfiction, that weren't just about you showing that you're the only cinematic purveyor of truth out there. You actually collaborated with others and created moviegoing experiences that were both entertaining and provocative. You made films that everyone -- black, white, whatever -- could get behind because they weren't about you anymore.

Now, that year is just a sad, sad memory. You are once again doing what you do best: making bloated, unwieldy, haughty, imposing films that have you saying a lot, but sadly, nothing of actual coherence.

I am disappointed in "Miracle at St. Anna." But more importantly, and more unfortunately, I am truly disappointed in you, Spike.

Sincerely,

Craig D. Lindsey (aka Uncle Crizzle)