The myriad of subplots in the movie, unfortunately, take away from the overall feel. The main plot follows the four men as they experience WWII trapped in a Tuscan Village. There is also a subplot that deals with a framing involving a murder nearly forty years after the conclusion of the war. On top of that, there is the Italian resistance movement. Add all that together and it is easy to get lost along the winding, twisting trail Spike lays out in Miracle at St. Anna. There is a good deal of coarse language and brutal violence in the movie as well. Granted, most war movies carry this stigma.
The movie starts off in a man's apartment in the early 1980s. The man is watching a John Wayne movie about war, and after that, he goes to work at a NYC post office. He is selling stamps when he recognizes a customer and pulls out a gun, shoots the man, closes his window and walks away, leaving the gun behind. The only thing saving Negron from life in prison is an interview with Tom Boyle (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a reporter.
The film flashes back to Negron's memory of WWII when the frontline infantry is walking across a river, including he and his three friends. Train has the (now very valuable bust) attached to his bag with a net and ignores the jibes of his friends telling him not to carry it any longer. Gunfire explodes around them and most of the infantry is killed instantly. The four (specifically Train) end up saving a small boy from being buried alive in a collapsing barn as it is being bombed by the Germans. The boy sees Train as his caretaker, and has the disturbing issue of talking to his invisible friend (another theme of the supernatural in the movie).
After wading through three or four subplots, the movie turns back to the main plot with the Germans invading the small town. Many of the villagers are killed and Train and the boy, Angelo, are shot. In the firefight, only Hector remains as the only uninjured ally left in the village. Oddly enough, right as he is about to be executed, fate intervenes and he survives, as a sympathetic German leader gives him a gun, telling him to defend himself.
The neatest part of the movie for me is when we discover who Angelo's invisible friend really is and what his story is. Angelo's corporeal friend then tells Angelo to never forget what he has witnessed or the events he had survived. The two boys (one real and one spectral) walk over to Hector and he, in turn, gives Angelo his rosary beads. The boy says goodbye and walks away hand-in-hand with his invisible friend.
The movie goes back to the picture of the bloody gun in the post office... it turns out this is the same gun the German gave him. I won't spoil why he shot the man, however.
Miracle at St. Anna's ending was very emotional, and it wrapped up the four thousand plots well, however, I would have been very satisfied with the main plot. The movie was tediously long, sharply veering, and confusing at time. The violence and language I could have done without, but Miracle at St. Anna is still a decent war movie... especially because they are so few about the Buffalo Soldiers!
