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Nothing Divine in Lee's Miracle

Posted Sep 26, 08 1:41 PM CDT in Arts & Living 

(Newser) Miracle at St. Anna strives to be inspiring and powerful and epic, but Spike Lee's latest isn’t any of those things, critics say. “Mostly it's just unfocused, sprawling and badly in need of editing,” writes Claudia Puig of USA Today. Full of odd tonal shifts, stereotyped characters, and clichéd dialogue, Miracle is “muddled and diffuse,” writes Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly. Worse, “I had a hard time finding Spike Lee in it.”

The film is the first to focus on African-American soldiers in WWII, so it has a monumental mission, but “that's more or less the only monumental thing about it,” says Gleiberman. But Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times appreciates Lee’s effort. “Miracle at St. Anna contains richness, anger, history, sentiment, fantasy, reality, violence and life,” he writes. “Maybe too much. Better than too little.”
Sources: Rotten Tomatoes, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, Chicago Sun-Times

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Matteo Sciabordi, Omar Benson Miller, Michael Ealy, Derek Luke and Laz Alonso are shown in a scene from "Miracle at St. Anna."   (AP Photo)
Director's Martin Scorsese, left, and Spike Lee arrive at the premiere of "Miracle at St. Anna" at The Ziegfeld Theatre in New York on Monday, Sept. 22, 2008.   (AP Photo/Peter Kramer)
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Miracle at St. Anna movie trailer.   (moviespartdeux)

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Miracle at St. Anna winds up as a pastiche of racial-
historical correction, showboat atrocity, murder mystery, love story, and
windy meditation. - Owen Gleiberman

Miracle at St. Anna contains richness, anger, history, sentiment, fantasy, reality, violence and life. Maybe too much. Better than too little. - Roger Ebert

No doubt there's a great
story to be told among the individual sagas of the
Buffalo Soldier unit, but
this one isn't it. - Claudia Puig

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