Da 5 Bloods (United States, 2020)
June 15, 2020
When it comes to a Spike Lee movie, it would be foolish to
expect a politics-free zone. Lee is an activist filmmaker and has never
pretended otherwise. He makes movies that entertain and educate but, most
importantly, he seeks to challenge. Some have argued that he speaks only
to a black audience but I would argue that he’s equally interested in being
heard by white viewers. The problem is, some have preconceived notions about
Lee and his message and are unwilling to listen or, if they do, they don’t want
to hear. Is it possible to “get past the politics” and enjoy the movie? Possibly
not, because the two are inextricably entwined. But it is possible to watch the
movie from an opposing perspective and be engaged.
Kismet has made Da 5 Bloods timely in that it arrives
as if by fate at a cultural inflection point when people of all races are
engaging in (hopefully) meaningful dialogue about the very themes the movie
addresses. Such a reading of Da 5 Bloods ignores, however, that this
isn’t new territory for Lee. He has been beating this drum for decades. It’s
rare that one of his films doesn’t delve deeply into issues of race relations.
Lee was on board with the Black Lives Matter movement long before Colin
Kaepernick used sports to bring it into many white people’s living rooms.
Da 5 Bloods starts out as a thoughtful (although not
necessarily introspective) look at how black servicemen perceive the Vietnam
War through the lens of the half-century that has passed since its peak. In the
eye of the storm, it was all about surviving and protecting one’s brothers. As
it faded into the rearview mirror, however, the bitter irony of the experience has
become clear: black soldiers were fighting and dying in a foreign country for a
homeland that devalued them as people and citizens. The movie offers a telling
statistic: 11% of the United States’ population circa 1970 was black, but about
35% of the men fighting in Vietnam were of that race.
Lee plants one foot firmly in the early 1970s with a series
of flashback sequences that recall the war and the other in the era of Trump
(called both “President Fake Bone Spurs” and “The Klansman President” in case
anyone is uncertain where the director stands regarding the current
administration). The modern-day portion of the narrative has four Vietnam
survivors – jovial Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), serious-minded Otis (Clarke
Peters), low-key Eddie (Norm Lewis), and angry, aggressive Paul (Delroy Lindo)
– head back to the thoroughly modernized Suck to make their peace with their
experiences there. This includes locating the remains of their leader, Stormin’
Norman (Chadwick Boseman), and retrieving a trunk of CIA gold bars that they
discovered and hid during their tour. Accompanying the four returning soldiers
is Paul’s estranged son, David (Jonathan Majors). They are aided (or imperiled)
at various points by several inhabitants of Ho Chi Minh City – Tien (Le Y Lan),
a wartime prostitute who dallied with Otis; the helpful tour guide Vinh (Johnny
Tri Nguyen), who refers to the past conflict as “The American War;” a foreign
“entrepreneur” (Jean Reno); and an idealistic French woman, Hedy (Melanie
Thierry), who is involved in land-mine removal.
The deeper we get into the movie, however, the clearer it
becomes that this is less an homage to films like Apocalypse Now (which
is explicitly referenced) and a criticism of things like First Blood,
than a reworking of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Although Lee and
his co-screenwriters (Danny Bilson, Paul Demeo, Kevin Willmott) deviate
significantly from John Huston’s 1948 script (based on the novel by B. Traven),
the second half of Da 5 Bloods tracks The Treasure of the Sierra
Madre surprisingly closely. There’s a tongue-in-cheek paraphrase of the
“stinkin’ badges” line and the madness of one character echoes that of Humphrey
Bogart’s Dobbs. The theme, about the love of money being the root of all evil,
is intact. It also gives Lee an opportunity to add a few action scenes to the
menu.
There’s a lot of fat here – too much, in fact. It gets in
the way of Lee’s themes without adding much in the way of depth or breadth. The
quasi-romance between David and Hedy is an example. It’s not sufficiently
developed to be interesting and, as a result, it’s mostly a distraction and a time-waster.
This is a common failing with prestige Netflix films. The distributor attracts
directors by offering them a generous budget and carte blanche control. The
latter quality is a double-edged sword, however, because it enables directors
to be less critical when determining which cuts need to be made. It’s not as
big an issue here as it was in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, but the 2
½-hour running time is at least 15 minutes (and perhaps more) beyond what the
narrative requires.
Lee uses archived clips to establish context and amplify
thematic content. Da 5 Bloods opens with a montage that recalls the
Civil Rights struggles of the 1970s. We hear from Muhammed Ali, Martin Luther
King, and Malcolm X (among others) as Lee italicizes the hypocrisy of black men
fighting America’s war in Vietnam while their U.S. brethren battled on the home
soil for equality. Regardless of how deeply into Treasure of Sierra Madre
territory the narrative ventures, it never loses its connection to the ‘70s.
For the flashbacks, Lee opts not to de-age the actors (with
one exception: a still photograph shown late in the proceedings). One can argue
whether his choice – to have a group of actors in their late-60s playing 20-somethings
– is more or less distracting than using technology to peel back the years. To
help differentiate between the war-era scenes and those that transpire in
modern times, Lee switches aspect ratios. The 1970s material is presented in
1.33:1 while the 2010s stuff is 2.35:1.
While Da 5 Blood’s themes and messages are delivered with the power of a sledgehammer, the overall narrative is a times messy, littered with contrivances and hampered by shifts in tone that don’t always work. Nevertheless, this is a work of passion and anger and it conveys points in the subtext that provoke an emotional and intellectual response. Is Lee preaching to the choir? Perhaps but those not already in the fold who give the film a chance may discover that the things Lee is saying are hard to disagree with regardless of your race, creed, or color.
Da 5 Bloods (United States, 2020)
Cast: Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Jonathan Majors, Chadwick Boseman, Mélanie Thierry, Paul Walter Hauser, Jasper Paakkonen, Johnny Nguyen, Jean Reno, Le Y Lan
Screenplay: Danny Bilson & Paul De Meo and Kevin Willmott & Spike Lee
Cinematography: Newton Thomas Sigel
Music: Terence Blanchard
U.S. Distributor: Netflix
U.S. Release Date: 2020-06-12
MPAA Rating: "R" (Violence, Profanity, )
Genre: War/Adventure
Subtitles: none
Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
- Mona Lisa (1969)
- Harriet (2019)
- (There are no more better movies of Clarke Peters)
- I Wanna Dance with Somebody (2022)
- (There are no more worst movies of Clarke Peters)
- (There are no more better movies of Norm Lewis)
- (There are no more worst movies of Norm Lewis)
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