MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA

Director: Spike Lee
Stars: Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso, Omar Benson Miller, Valentina Cervi, Matteo Sciabordi, Pierfrancesco Favino
Year: 2008
Rating: R

Spike Lee's masterpiece opens in New York City in 1983, when a quiet, unassuming salt-and-pepper-haired postal worker shoots one of his customers to death - a man who'd come to his window to purchase a 20-cent stamp. The postal clerk (the really, really underappreciated Laz Alonso, made up as an old man) is arrested without incident, but in his home the police find - wrapped up in the guy's closet - the marble head of an Italian statue that's worth a small fortune, gone missing in Italy since World War II. Meanwhile, in prison, postal worker Hector Negron (Alonso) hasn't said anything since his arrest ... until a young and hungry news reporter looking for his first big break (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) gets Negron to speak...

Sending viewers, in flashback, to 1943 and a group of Buffalo Soldiers in Tuscany, trying to push back the Germans in World War II. Soon many of the men are killed - the rest separated - and four of the soldiers (Derek Luke, Alonso, Michael Ealy, and Omar Benson Miller) find themselves on the outskirts of a Tuscan village, where they find a shell-shocked Italian boy who speaks to a best friend of his that isn't there.

The soldiers - taking the boy along with them - soon come across the village of Colognora, where they set up a base amidst the local partisans until they can find a way out. But when orders from their commanding officer, via radio, have the men being forced to seek out the Germans and take one of them prisoner, the ensuing action - along with a recent massacre of innocent citizens nearby that involves the boy, Angelo (Matteo Sciabordi) - all make for a dramatic and compelling war story that all ties in to the elderly postal worker that would shoot one of his customers in New York City forty years later.

This is a touching, well-acted and skillfully directed film. Spike Lee is at the top of his game here, as is the cast led by the four men - Luke, Alonso, Ealy, and Miller - who play the four conflicted soldiers fighting for the very country that regards them as second-class citizens. Omar Benson Miller, as PFC Sam Train, is particularly moving and believable as the "chocolate giant" who befriends and bonds with the boy Angelo the most - but Laz Alonso is truly Oscar-worthy in the film, particularly by story's end.

Clocking in at nearly 2 hours/45 minutes, neither the tension nor drama ever lags in Spike Lee's visionary film, and he gets the best performances from all his cast. Have a box of tissues handy, but it's well worth it; there is some real outstanding filmmaking going on here, and it's a shame Oscar didn't acknowledge that. ***** - Reel Must-See