Spike Lee’s Miracle At St. Anna is definitely not the type of movie you want to see tired, in the early morning hours. But that was my experience. I’ve seen many World War II films over the years, and Anna is distinctly a Spike Lee Joint. It has the obvious race perspective war story you expect, mix one part combined murder mystery (which is used as a framing device), and the obtrusive bass-y grandiose score (ala Inside Man).
If you’ve seen the trailer then you know that it all begins with a random murder at the post office, with a teller who kills a customer with a German Luger. Joseph Gordon [...]

Spike Lee’s big screen adaptation of James McBride’s Miracle at St. Anna chronicles the story of four black American soldiers of the 92nd Infantry Division who get trapped in a small Tuscan village on the Gothic Line during the Italian Campaign of World War II. The film deals with the Sant’Anna di Stazzema massacre, but is structured with a Titanic/Saving Private Ryan flashback plot device involving a priceless Italian artifact, which is discovered in a murderer’s closet. The sculpted head from Ponte Santa Trinita, valued at $5 million, is a clue to a mystery that began 39 years earlier, when the soldiers found themselves trapped behind enemy lines and separated [...]