Miracle at St. Anna Critic Reviews

Contains scenes of brilliance, interrupted by scenes that meander. There is too much, too many characters, too many subplots. But there is so much here that is powerful that it should be seen no matter its imperfections.Read the full review

Miracle at St. Anna is overlong and poorly focused. It tends to meander, the military context is not well established, and too much time is spent on interaction with underdeveloped secondary characters.Read the full review

It is in the fragile bonds that form between the black soldiers and the Italian villagers that Miracle at St. Anna breaks free of its own grandiosity and tells a grounded, moving, human story. Not a miracle by any means, but an earthy inquiry into death, duty, friendship and honor. What we’ve always wanted from war movies.Read the full review

Aspires to be epic, but mostly it's just unfocused, sprawling and badly in need of editing.Read the full review

The film collapses because Lee can't sew these vignettes into a seamless tapestry. He's more interested in getting even than he is in getting it right.Read the full review

Miracle at St. Anna is not work of outrage or joy. It's something distressingly new for the filmmaker: a work of obligation. It feels like a movie Lee made in order to say he did it.Read the full review

Miracle isn't powerful, it's muddled and diffuse.Read the full review

Miracle plays like "School Daze" transplanted to the European front, with the token militant, the token uplift-the-race type, and the token buffoon all marching inexorably toward Checkpoint Irony.Read the full review

The movie winds up a casualty of schmaltzy, patronizing sentiment on the one hand and overweening ambition on the other.Read the full review