See, I hate that. I hate movies which can't resist the temptation to spice real events up with invented love stories (Pearl Harbor, Captain Corelli's Mandolin) or bogus mysteries (Miracle at St. Anna), all while pompously claiming to be "based on true events". I hate tedious narrative frames which serve no purpose whatsoever apart for giving viewers a modern setting to which, supposedly, they can relate more easily before flashbacks kick in.
12 august 1944, town of Sant'Anna, Italy: German soldiers killed 560 people, including women and children. You'd think such an awful event would deserve to be treated in a straightforward manner, without adding clichés (which here reach an almost toxic level) or making stuff up. But race-obsessed filmmaker Spike Lee isn't really interested in that terrifying war crime, but rather in the (fictional) story of four Afro-American soldiers.
See, there was an interesting movie to be made about the Buffalo Soldiers; the problem is, using a real-life massacre merely as a backdrop for an invented story is callous and tone-deaf. The Sant'Anna tragedy deserved its own movie.
Besides, the movie falsifies history, changing crucial circumstances which lead to the massacre and blaming it on the (fictional) betrayal of a partisan.
5/10
12 august 1944, town of Sant'Anna, Italy: German soldiers killed 560 people, including women and children. You'd think such an awful event would deserve to be treated in a straightforward manner, without adding clichés (which here reach an almost toxic level) or making stuff up. But race-obsessed filmmaker Spike Lee isn't really interested in that terrifying war crime, but rather in the (fictional) story of four Afro-American soldiers.
See, there was an interesting movie to be made about the Buffalo Soldiers; the problem is, using a real-life massacre merely as a backdrop for an invented story is callous and tone-deaf. The Sant'Anna tragedy deserved its own movie.
Besides, the movie falsifies history, changing crucial circumstances which lead to the massacre and blaming it on the (fictional) betrayal of a partisan.
5/10