Miracle at St. Anna

Spike Lee is not subtle. His movies yell, pound you over the head to get your attention. If you wonder why, pick up Ralph Wiley's Why Black People Tend To Shout.

His intention is to provoke and he has done it in compelling ways, from Do The Right Thing to his most commercial outing, Inside Man. And Miracle at St. Anna is no different.

This story of an all-black Army unit fighting in Italy during World War II begins with an old man sitting in his apartment watching John Wayne in the movie, The Longest Day. Anger is sketched out in the wrinkles of his face as he quietly says, "We fought for this country too."

That sentiment is the theme that runs through this movie, an acknowledgement that black men sacrificed their lives for a country that refused to treat them as U.S. citizens.

A few minutes later, that old man, working in New York at a post office, inexplicably shoots another man. In his apartment is the head of a statute in Italy that's been missing since 1944.

And it is to this time that we are taken, where the old man is now a young Cpl. Hector Negron fighting as part of the all-black 92nd Infantry Division in Italy. The mystery of that statute head and why he shot that man will be solved by going back in time.

In 1944, alongside Negron is Sgt. Bishop Cummings (Michael Ealy), 2nd Staff Sgt. Aubrey Stamps (Derek Luke) and Private First Class Sam Train (Omar Benson Miller).

The four men soon find themselves trapped in an Italian village even as German forces plan a secret counterattack. Train forges a special relationship with a young boy he finds in a barn. And Cummings and Stamps boil over how to deal with an America that treats Germans better than black Americans as well as fight over the affections of an Italian woman.

Lee packs a lot into the film and sometimes the effort pays off. Especially poignant are the burgeoning relationship between the boy, Angelo, and Train.

And Lee gets at in powerful ways how ironic it is that black Americans feel freer in Italy than they do in their own country. No more is that hit home than in a scene in Louisian where the soldiers come to get something to eat and then are refused, even as German prisoners are given top-shelf service. The racism is of the in-your-face variety and it stings.

But this movie is not just about racism. It is about the tragedy of war and the humanity that sometimes rises out of that muck. We see evil in its worst form at the massacre at St. Anna where Nazi soldiers shot men, women and children begging for their lives.

Yet we also see compassion and the power of human kindness in a harsh world of betrayal and brutality.

There is a rough beauty in this film anchored by Lee's powerful direction, a more than appropriate score and wonderfully rendered cinematography.

Unfortunately, Lee may have been too ambitious, which is not a bad thing if you can hold your movie together. That doesn't happen. The film falls apart in the later half with an over-the-top ending, sentimental in ways Lee has never been and ripped from the much better The Shawshank Redemption. Even worse, having Stamps and Cummings fight over a woman doesn't reveal anything about their characters but only serves to distract from the seriousness of the movie.

Here, Lee forgets the simple power of a story beautifully told. He forgets to pull back.

But that's Lee, never suble, always yelling, resulting in a film that's sometimes too noisy for its own good.