Miracle at St. Anna 2008

Ben Lyons, At the Movies: It's impressive that a filmmaker of Lee's distinction is willing to continue to push boundaries. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: Setting the record straight after so many years and so many movies is not necessarily a simple undertaking, and this film sometimes stumbles under its heavy, self-imposed burden of historical significance. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: Lee screws up his best ideas by trying to blow us away. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Malcolm X (1992) proved that Lee could rise to the challenge of a sweeping historical epic, but this 160-minute drama is overblown and unconvincing, the director's bright, poppy style clashing with the grim subject matter. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: 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. Read more

Jeff Shannon, Seattle Times: It's disappointingly heavy-handed as an examination of racial prejudice in the military. Read more

Jonathan F. Richards, Film.com: 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. Read more

Noel Murray, AV Club: Miracle At St. Anna stabilizes after an outright awful first hour, and becomes merely a middling war movie with a heightened social consciousness. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: Ultimately Miracle at St. Anna aims too high, or at least at too many targets. Lee would have been better served to concentrate on one of the many aspects of the story. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: This movie is too many things without one of those things ever breaking your heart or boiling your blood. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: 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. Read more

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: Miracle at St. Anna is wildly unfocused in terms of tone and, at two hours and 40 minutes, it is unjustifiably overlong. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: 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. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: Lee brings a maturing sensibility and a talent for ensemble performance to a tale that is loving, angry and profoundly American. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: The movie undeniably has its powerful moments, but it runs a crooked, crazy race moving from one to another, leaving the viewer both exhausted and frustrated. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Miracle at St. Anna wants to do too many things at once to do any of them with much verve. It aspires to be a war epic, but it's dominated less by combat than by flat, meandering talk. Read more

Laremy Legel, Film.com: Read more

Tom Maurstad, Dallas Morning News: Along the way, Mr. Lee has some gripping moments. But for every striking irony, there is a hammer-handed scene driving the same point into self-parody. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: An uneven blend of realism and fantasy. The movie is both vivid and baffling -- which is to say, it was made by Spike Lee. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Ultimately, the film falters -- due to its length, some unconvincing European characters and too many turns that depend on sudden supernatural intervention. Read more

Bob Mondello, NPR: Some themes are familiar, others freshly provocative. But nearly all get scattered as screenwriter James McBride lets the story drift off in six directions at once. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: Lee takes nearly three hours to tell this sad tale, but he never makes the most of the opportunity. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: The sad thing is, there's a perfectly fine, Sam Fulle-rish, 90-minute war movie on a worthy subject trapped somewhere in the self-indulgences of Miracle at St. Anna. Read more

Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: Mr. Lee has stretched his material in so many different directions that one is left with unacceptable levels of religiosity and sentimentality in the overall context of the naked brutality we have witnessed. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: [A] sloppy, absurdly long mashup of combat film cliches. Read more

Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: Miracle is, by turns, a dazzling, dim, lucid, confounding, absorbing, tedious, silly, profound, bloody and bracing account of four African American infantrymen separated from their Buffalo Soldiers unit in Tuscany during World War II. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: It's impossible not to admire what Lee has wrought here, and the evident passion with which it has been brought to the screen. However, the realization is flawed, and those flaws make this 160-minute epic feel a little too much like an ordeal. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: There are scenes that could have been lost to more decisive editing, but I found after a few days that my mind did the editing for me, and I was left with lasting impressions. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: The impulse here is to say something about the nobility of this movie's intent or to note that Spike Lee is one of our best filmmakers. But the first and most honest thing to say about Miracle at St. Anna is that it's an awful mess. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Miracle is far from the sensitive racial politics Lee is capable of delivering, but darned if it isn't rousing good fun. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: Though it runs for roughly two hours and 40 minutes, there's nothing particularly epic about Spike Lee's version of the war. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: [Lee] resorts to many of the same hoary cliches and fantasy situations he so frequently condemns. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Miracle at St. Anna aspires to be epic, but mostly it's just unfocused, sprawling and badly in need of editing. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: Clocking in at 160 minutes, this is a sloppy stew in which the ingredients of battle action, murder mystery, little-kid sentiment and history lesson don't mix well. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: 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. Read more