USA Today Says "God Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise" Is Not Spike Lee's Best - But Watch It Tonight Anyway

Righteous anger can take an artist only so far so often.

In the immediate wake of Hurricane Katrina, brilliantly expressed rage was more than enough to power Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, a devastating indictment of man's inadequate response to a foreseeable natural disaster.

But while anger still simmers in and around New Orleans five years later, its targets have spread and its impact has dissipated. What's left in its wake is If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise, a four-hour follow-up that sputters more than it soars -- and is likely to leave most viewers behind.

Clearly the subject matter of Da Creek, the continued suffering of a great American city, is a crucial one. And many of the problems Lee explores, from decaying schools to corrupt cops to class-fueled battles over land use, will strike chords of recognition in cities both large and small all across America.

Yet so many troubles are aired in the first three hours of the film that it begins to feel as if you've been dropped into the middle of a local debate that predated Katrina by decades and will continue just as long. There's a cacophony of charges and countercharges, with too little effort made to sort out possibly justified complaints from crank accusations, and no effort at all to stay on point. Lee is an indulgent filmmaker, both of himself and of some of his subjects, and that indulgence can become wearing.