Da 5 Bloods Review: Spike Lee's Netflix Jungle Thriller Is A Powerful History Lesson

Spike Lee has been one of America's most important and prolific filmmakers for over 30 years, but like all directors with long and diverse careers, he has experienced various levels of critical and commercial success. Prior to 2018, his last major box office success was 2006's heist thriller Inside Man, but the success of Blackkklansman was a very welcome reminder of Lee's immense gift as both a fiery social commentator and consummate cinematic craftsman. For his next movie, Lee has teamed up with Netflix to deliver the sprawling and powerful drama Da 5 Bloods. Lee has often used real-life documentary footage to give his movies a social and historical context, and Da 5 Bloods is no different. It begins with a clip of Mohammand Ali in 1978, explaining to reporters why he refused to fight in the Vietnam War, followed by newsreel footage taking us through the timeline of the war, with focus on the disproportionate numbers of African American soldiers who were sent to fight in South East Asia. The film then cuts to the present day and introduces its four main characters--Paul (Delroy Lindo), Otis (Clarke Peters), Eddie (Norm Lewis), and Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr.). The quartet served together in Vietnam, along with the "fifth blood," Norm (Chadwick Boseman), who never made it home. During a tour in 1971 they discovered a case of gold bars in a crashed helicopter that was intended to pay the Vietnamese who stood up against the Viet Cong. Knowing that there was no way to take the gold out during the war, the quintet buried it, intending to return after the conflict to claim it. 40 years later, the old friends reconvene in Ho Chi Minh City and head back into the jungle to honor their fallen colleague and find the gold. Da 5 Bloods started life as a more conventional action adventure by Rocketeer screenwriters Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo, before Lee and his Blackkklansman collaborator Kevin Willmott reworked it from an African-American perspective. The result is a long movie--155 minutes--and despite the simplicity of the plot, there's a lot to it in terms of both the narrative and the themes it addresses. On the most obvious level it's a heist thriller that takes influence from John Huston's classic western The Treasure of Sierra Madre. It's also a war movie, with flashbacks throughout to the Bloods' time in 'Nam. It's a moving but often funny character study, about four old friends reconnecting with each other and forced to confront some dark truths about their time in Vietnam. And, being a Spike Lee Joint, it's a searing political film that addresses America's involvement in foreign conflicts and the price the black community paid for a war that many felt they should not have been involved in--not to mention some very topical references to Donald Trump and the Black Lives Matter movement. It's a whole lot of movie.Continue Reading at GameSpot
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