Spike Lee’s latest has contrivances and extravagances – but also enough substance, swagger and standout performances to thrill.
DA 5 BLOODS
(Dir: Spike Lee | Time: 2h34mins | On: Netflix)
This post-Vietnam War epic flies out of the gate, righteously and urgently. Like the best moments in Spike Lee’s his best films, the opening is bursting with anger, relevance, rhythm and swagger.
The Netflix logo has barely faded when a hard cut brings us Muhammad Ali in 1978, saying with his authoritative charisma that he refused to kill “poor hungry people” in Vietnam on behalf of a nation where prejudice is still rife.
A powerful sequence of events and speeches from that war’s era, set to Marvin Gaye’s Inner City Blues, adds context and connects the dots of exploitation. Civil rights protests, police brutality, needless death and suffering, both in the US and Vietnam. Landing on ‘Da Moon’ while children here starve.
“When you take 20 million black people and make them fight all your wars and pick all your cotton and you never give them any real recompense… sooner or later, their allegiance towards you is going to wear thin,” says Malcolm X to bring it home to today, as if needed.
The fall of Saigon mutates into present day Ho Chi Minh City, at a hotel lobby where four aging Vietnam War veterans – the surviving Bloods – meet up with infectious euphoria.
Delroy Lindo, Norm Lewis and The Wire duo Clarke Peters and Isiah Whitlock Jr bring instant chemistry, panache and emotional depth to their mission: going back into the jungle to recover the body of their fifth member, messianic squadron leader Stormin’ Norman (Chadwick Boseman), who died in a mission to recover a cache of gold belonging to the US government.
Of course, they will also be attempting to recover the gold, which they had reported as lost 50 years earlier. Ethical concerns are addressed in rich flashbacks that again bring us to current themes: the loot would be put towards reparations for the black community.
Now, throw in a typically-inspired Spike Lee musical scene – four grandads have never looked cooler on a dance floor – and an upriver trip riffing on Apocalypse Now, and we are set for a spectacular genre mash, a buddy comedy war film/adventure rich in themes, cultural references and with a fascinating moral edge.
But that balance and momentum prove difficult to sustain over an ambitiously long 2h35min running time. As the mission inevitably unravels, Da 5 Bloods succumbs to more predictable genre tropes, including a painfully contrived coincidence with a secondary cast of characters who never convince.
Various direct references to Donald Trump also distract. Lindo, superb as the most tormented of the vets, crippled with PTSD and guilt, gets ridiculed early on for supporting Trump. With the obvious present day parallels already skilfully laid out, it could have been left at that – but subtlety is no longer Lee’s MO when it comes to politics.
In other ways, the cultural and historical exposition is done expertly and entertainingly. Through their conversations and flashbacks, the Bloods get into the traumas of an “immoral war that was not ours”, the disproportionate deployment of African American soldiers in the front lines and various little-known acts of black heroism, while also providing wonderful moments of levity and camaraderie. MS
Verdict: 8/10. Despite some unchecked extravagances and major contrivances that blunt its spectacular early momentum, Spike Lee’s genre-straddling and incredibly timely Vietnam War epic has enough substance and swagger to thrill and inform, boosted by an excellent soundtrack and the chemistry of its irresistible leading old-timers
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Make it 3xFILMS with these ideas for further viewing:
BLACKKKLANSMANN (2018) / Lee’s previous, which landed him a long overdue Best Screenplay oscar, is just as current as Bloods, but much tighter – and more electrifying for it.
DEAD PRESIDENTS (1995)/ This inner city-drama/war movie/heist thriller bites off way more than it can chew to be recommended, but it gets marks for trying to show in its story the same little-known issues Da 5 Bloods tells through dialogue and exposition.