Miracle at St. Anna Critic Reviews

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

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

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

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 the full review

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 the full review

Odd too, for a film that wants to correct impression anyone had as to the abilities of black U.S. soldier in combat, are the ethnic cliches about Italians and Germans, to say nothing of rednecks.Read the full review

The first and most honest thing to say about Miracle at St. Anna is that it's an awful mess.Read the full review

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