Miracle at St Anna (Widescreen Edition)

High hopes for St. Anna
I had wanted to like this movie so much. As much as I wanted to like Windtalkers. Both had potential to be really great but were unable to rise above an absolutely juvenile and cheesy script. I am an avid WWII buff and I give alot of license to war movies and don't pick them apart for their accuracy or lack there of but this one not only insults the viewer but the legacy of the 92nd/Buffalo.

The Good : Absolutely beautiful cinematography. If you could mute the sound (dialogue) one might think they were watching a pretty decent WWII era movie. Battle scenes were shot well. Uniforms were pretty dead on accurate and the weapons were accurate although Thompson SMGs and 1911 .45 caliber HGs did not have 100 round clips......

The Bad : Awful and embarrassing dialogue embellished with overacting which made it almost comical. Obligatory nudity. Soldiers using language and phrases that would be used only today. A German louspeaker that blares Axis Sally's propaganda...

A gawdawful mess, compounded with racist stereotypes
The bloated, convoluted WWII flick makes no sense whatsoever. Nothing that is happening ever makes sense militarily or tactically, and the plot is silly nonsense.

For none of the above reasons, however, would I bother to review this dreck. What greatly troubles me is how Spike Lee, a black man, depicts the black soldiers in this movie: cowardly, undisciplined, mutinous, hypersexual, superstitious, ignorant, contentious, sloppy, etc. What gives? If a white man had made this movie and drawn the black characters this way, he would be widely derided as a racist, and rightly so. Why in the world would Spike Lee perpetuate these sorts of racist stereoptypes about soldiers of his own race???

This garbage deserves swift oblivion, and Spike Lee needs to do some serious soul-searching.

A missed opportunity
This picture was a big dissapointment. There was a great opportunity to tell the struggles and triumphs of members of the Buffalo Soldiers in WWII. He could have told the story of a couple of soldiers as they progress through bootcamp and enter combat. But instead Spike Lee produces a ridiculous, heavy handed, grossly fictional account. The film fails on several levels:

1) All the white officers are vicous racist. The protagonist are sterotypes. There is the obligatory over-sexed African American, the big simple guy, the quite reflective wise one, etc. The Italian peasants seem to be only interested in jumping into bed and showing off their breast. In reality, they were starving and caught in terrible cross fires.
2) The story is absolutely predictable
3) A group of African American soldier pull their weapons on racist civilians in town during boot camp. They would be instantly identified, court marshalled, and put in the slammer.
4) The CO drives in...

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