Pulp scavenger Spike Lee goes Rambo in his typically timely way, waving a middle finger to war and racism at an amazingly concurrent time to real-world events.
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ½
Corey Hogan
During the Vietnam War, a black squadron of US soldiers who have dubbed themselves “Da 5 Bloods” – Paul (Delroy Lindo), David (Jonathan Majors), Otis (Clarke Peters), Eddie (Norm Lewis) and Norman (Chadwick Boseman) – find a locker of gold bars in a CIA cargo crash. They plan to use the riches to help themselves and their community, until Norman is killed, and the gold is lost. Years later, the four remaining Bloods return to Vietnam as old men, in hopes of recovering the gold and Norman’s remains. They find themselves unprepared, however, for the remnants of the war, the post-trauma and the tears in family and friendship they’re about to face.
With recent events in the United States making waves around the world and reigniting the #BlackLivesMatter movement, it’s no surprise really that Spike Lee’s filmography has quickly found new life. From Do the Right Thing all the way up to BlacKkKlansman, the majority of Lee’s films have explored race relations, urban crime and the black community, and so a new Netflix exclusive Lee film couldn’t arrive more appropriately timed.
In many ways, Da 5 Bloods does fit right in with Lee’s blisteringly unapologetic vocal politics, but in many more ways it is something much more experimental and bizarre. Taking a script that once had Oliver Stone attached to direct and giving it a complete overhaul (the four old men at its core were once white), he’s updated it to show the underseen side of black soldiers in the Vietnam War, while narratively taking an everything-including-the-kitchen-sink approach.
Beginning as a broad, almost Wild Hogs-lite buddy comedy about old-timers reliving their glory days, we soon come to find that things aren’t quite as joyous as they seem as we’re dropped into Vietnam with the Bloods. It’s here that the film takes multiple sharp turns and morphs into several different things entirely, including a rumination on age and existential dread, cutthroat friendship drama, treasure hunt adventure and violent war actioner. Tonally, it’s so all over the place that it winds up quite messy, with whatever messages Lee had in mind becoming lost in a jumbled explosion of ideas.
Cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel keeps things just as frenetically varied, employing a vibrantly colourful palette and shifting aspect ratio between non-Vietnam scenes, the jungle and old-timey flashback sequences (for which Lee had to convince Netflix to let him use 16mm film). The mandatory real-life footage works in its discomfort but does feel a little tacked-on when attempting to relate the story to multiple historical events.
That said, Da 5 Bloods still stands among some of the better originals Netflix has to offer and has so much crammed into it that its over two-and-a-half-hour runtime is entertainingly brisk. Suspenseful and thought-provoking, with a collection of great performances from the elderly actors (especially an Apocolypse Now–type descent into madness by Delroy Lindo) it serves as a good reminder why Lee remains ingrained into the cultural zeitgeist.
Da 5 Bloods is available on Netflix Australia from 12 June 2020
Image courtesy of Netflix Inc.
Hooked On Film 