Stars:
**
Rating: R for language
and excessive violence
Run
Time: 2
hours, 40 minutes. In English, German and Italian with English subtitles
Spike
Lee is hard to pin down, his directorial skills ranging from the subversive (“Do
the Right Thing”) to the scandalous (“Bamboozled”) to the stylishly studio
(“Inside Man”). File “Miracle” under unwieldy.
Lee
is passionate about this terrifically tall tale of a murder that takes place in
1980s New York City, where WWII vet cum postal worker Hector Negron (Laz
Alonso) pulls a Luger on a customer buying stamps, killing the man in cold
blood.
When
police investigate Negron’s apartment they find a priceless artifact buried in
his closet; a marble head from an Italian bridge that has been missing since
Hitler blew the span to smithereens in the early 1940s.
Flash
back to Tuscany circa 1944, where the African American Buffalo Soldiers of the
92nd Infantry Division are making their presence felt on the front lines. The battalion is introduced in jerky
strokes of generic character; the stoic (Derek Luke as Stamps), the playboy
(Michael Ealy going ghetto as Bishop), the simpleton (Omar Benson Miller as
Train), etc.
A bloody
ambush during a routine river crossing leads the battle-weary players into a
charming Tuscan village of cobblestones and light. Courtesy Lee’s clumsy flow
we are introduced to a fey orphan boy (schmaltzy shades of “Cinema Paradiso”
and “The Bicycle Thief”) and the villagers who harbor him from invading forces while
warming to the Americans’ unfamiliar ways.
There’s
a tonal drift afoot that makes for sequential confusion. Are we supporting the
role of the African American soldier in an all-white war or solving a juicy
murder mystery? Six degrees of separation or separation of church and state as
government and religion jockey for narrative one-upmanship?
Ever
the fan of heavy-handed symbolism Lee hammers home examinations on racial
stereotyping, terrorism and a myriad of barriers; prattling and preachy but not
entirely without entertainment value. That is until the maudlin climax leaves a
treacly residue of exaggerated valor and sentiment.