Clint Eastwood 1, Spike Lee 0

This summer, Spike Lee and Clint Eastwood got into a very public war of words, when Lee attacked Eastwood for not giving enough representation to African-American soldiers in his duo of WWII films, Flags Of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima. Lee made the comments at the Cannes film festival, where he just happened to be showcasing an eight minute reel of his own WWII epic, Miracle At St. Anna. While I understood Lee's point, his actions played out as nothing more than some bait to throw journalists to give free promotion to his upcoming film. As for Eastwood, his reaction was just as juvenile, and I frankly thought his WWII films were a pedestrian endeavor at best. All that said, I hoped that Lee would back up his vitriol with a film that would finally bring a real African-American perspective to WWII.

He didn't.

Miracle At St. Anna is a qualified trainwreck that conversely has too much and too little within its overly long two hour and forty minute running time. What is in excess is plot, with James McBride's script (adapted from his own novel) overflowing with multiple, meandering plot lines that often stall and stutter, instead of advancing the story. Thus, its all the more vexing that every character in the film - the quartet of black soldiers; German soliders; Italian citizens and even Americans back home - never develop beyond one dimensional characters. It's hard to believe that the same man who made the wonderfully furious and complex Do The Right Thing is responsible for the run of baby killing Germans, gesticulating Italians, backward hillbillies and ignorant American Army brass that populate the film. McBride and Lee even have the audacity of tossing in a "magical negro", an archetype which Lee himself so famously derided, into one of the lead roles.

As I waited with growing impatience for the film to end, wondering why John Leguizamo, John Turturro and Joseph Gordon-Levitt all signed up for roles that were essentially nothing more than (wasted) cameos, it was Derek Luke's magnetic performance that kept me invested in the film. And the photo still above starts one of the most powerful shots/sequences in the film, that ranks right up there with Lee's most memorable scenes, and it still gave me hope that Lee had something up his sleeve for the ending.

But it wasn't to be.

McBride's script closes the film with a conclusion so pat and sweet, you may need to see the dentist, and then as if to up the unbelievability factor, Lee treats the audience to "He's Got The Whole World In His Hands" over the end credits. Lee's film is so bad that comparing it Eastwood's film - or any other WWII film for that matter - is just embarrassing.

Spike Lee hasn't lost his passion, but with Miracle At St. Anna, he lost his focus. With the film unfolding in a few different directions - WWII epic, revenge film and fantasy film - it never gels into a cohesive whole. His indictment of the treatment of African-American soldiers simply gets lost in the mechanics of a preposterous, overly complicated story. I'm still rooting for Spike Lee but he needs to get back to the kind of lean, effective filmmaking that made Do The Right Thing, Clockers, Get On The Bus, 25th Hour and Inside Man so invigorating and powerful.

See "No End In Sight" For Free

No End In Sight, the Academy Award nominated film for Best Documentary Feature, has now been made available for free viewing, in its entirety and adfree, on YouTube, through election day, November 4th, 2008. This is a film that can't be reviewed, so much as discussed; that can't be watched, so much as felt. Director, writer and producer, Charles Ferguson, interviews key players within the various governmental departments responsible for the war and documents the decisions and policies that led to the breakdown and insurgency within Iraq. It's an extraordinarily powerful work, that is a sobering and devastating critique of the Bush administration and a superb analysis of a war gone wrong. It's a film that is frequently frustrating in showing the level of arrogance, hypocrisy and plain stubbornness of officials as they time and again ignore official military intelligence or plain common sense in every step of this ill-timed and illegitimate war.

However, what also comes through is the extraordinary bravery of the everyday soldiers on the ground. While we've heard countless politicians give the same tired rhetoric praising their work, it's not until you hear it first hand that it really strikes you how difficult their task is, and how deeply felt their conviction is to do right by the Iraqi people. Seth Moulton, David Yancey and Hugo Gonzalez are eloquent in describing the struggles they faced in Iraq, and in their unwavering desire to see finished the work that so many of their colleagues died working to achieve.

While critically lauded, the film only received a limited theatrical run and is currently available on DVD. Thanks to the generosity of Charles Ferguson and Magnolia Pictures you don't even need to leave the comfort of your own home to see the film.

Watch it here, in a high definition stream and pass on the link on to anybody who cares where the United States is headed for the next four years, especially during one of the most important elections of the last decade.