Miracle at St. Anna - More like a miracle it was made

                 My first review is going to be for the 2008 Spike Lee Joint, Miracle at St. Anna. This movie is based off of a book by James McBride of the same name. I won't give away too many details, but try to give you a rough outline of the story and how things went wrong. It is a WWII movie set in Tuscany in 1944 with a group of four Buffalo Soldiers. The story centers around one of the four soldiers telling his story to a reporter, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, in the present day.
                 Now first off, the movie is 2 hours and 40 minutes long, which is long in general for movies, and this one makes you suffer to last through the entire thing. The movie starts off with a bang, literally, and hooks you into the story and all of the mysterious elements that you realize will take the entire movie to uncover. Yet, at this moment in time you're okay with it. The first hour of the movie goes by pretty smoothly with Spike transitioning the viewer nicely from the present to past and demonstrating some of the terrible blatant racism that Buffalo Soldiers had to go through during WWII. However, it's around the time the 4 soldiers get separated from the rest of their company do things start to go downhill.
                  From this point on there are many flat points in the dialogue as well as plot. It makes the viewer wonder why this part of the story is taking so long and/or couldn't they have skipped this part all together. Through and the through the last hour and forty minutes drags along and when you finally hit the end you're excited to get all of the mysteries brought forth earlier solved. Yet, all that comes of it is disappointment from some lame cheesy ending that also is told with lack of detail, which makes it seem very implausible.
                   Some good things however about this movie I would say was the acting. Derek Luke, known as Boobie Miles from Friday Night Lights and Sean Combs in Notorious, did quite a good job of playing the officer in charge in an unknown situation thrust upon him. Laz Alonzo, also seen in season 4 of Californication, does a very good job of playing the arrogant horny asshole soldier.
                    In the end, this is obviously not a movie I would recommend as the length and plot really take any enjoyment out of this movie. So watch at your own risk. Who knows you could think I'm completely wrong and love it. You won't though.