A few words in defense of Spike Lee

By Alan Scherstuhl

Much of what critics have said about Miracle at St. Anna is true. Spike Lee’s two-and-a-half-hour drama about four African-American soldiers stranded behind enemy lines in World War II Italy is too long. At its undisciplined worst, it feels like someone crammed half a dozen scripts into a wood chipper set on overdrive.

What a two-star review such as that by Kansas City Star critic Robert Butler fails to convey: corny and bloated as it is, the bad stuff isn’t that bad, and the good stuff is thrilling in ways that only a Spike Lee movie would dare. It’s not a perfect movie, but it is a moving and important one.