Miracle at St. Anna

Spike Lee makes one of his worst films with this sorry attempt at a war movie. Four African-American soldiers fighting in Italy help a small boy, lug a statue head around, and basically fulfill all the requirements for genre clichés. This movie has an awful soundtrack from Terence Blanchard, who has managed to damage Lee films in the past. His work here is unbelievably distracting, appallingly bad stuff. Lee is capable of making a good movie, but certainly not this time out. While Lee obviously set out to show the mistreatment of African American soldiers during World War II, he winds up trafficking in the sort of stereotypes he often bemoans. There’s not an original idea in this picture. With the exception of one effective, yet preposterous, moment in a Southern ice cream shop, all of the scenes fall flat. Not the solid epic I was expecting, it amounts to a major misstep for a good director.