“In Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, the director makes the boldest homages of his career. In every one of his joints, Lee wears his cinematic influences on his sleeve, from the nods to Minnelli and The Band Wagon in Malcolm X to the evocation of NYC crime dramas like Dog Day Afternoon in Inside Man. These elements are never hidden; Lee knows you know what he’s doing and it frees him to graft his points onto these references. Here, Lee commandeers John Huston’s classic parable of greed, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre to tell the story of four Black Vietnam vets who return to Vietnam to retrieve a buried treasure of gold left there during the war. Unlike Humphrey Bogart and Huston’s Dad, Walter, Da Bloods crew of Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), Otis (Clarke Peters), Eddie (Norm Lewis) and Paul (Delroy Lindo) not only know where the gold is, but their motivations extend far past avarice. They also want to exhume the body of their platoon leader Stormin’ Norman (Chadwick Boseman), so they can bring him home and give him a proper burial. They are joined by the much younger David (Jonathan Majors), Paul’s son who has unfinished business with his emotionally distant father. Lee’s penchant for giving his characters funny names seems muted here, until one realizes Da 5 Bloods are named after the original members of The Temptations [Editor's note: I can't believe I didn't notice that].
“Da 5 Bloods is a Vietnam film that gives a shout-out to Apocalypse Now by having its protagonists do the Soul Train line dance under a huge sign emblazoned with the film’s title logo. The film also serves as a corrective to other ‘Nam films by making the veterans look like the majority of the men sent to this war. There are more Black veterans in this one film than in the entirety of the 80’s-era war films Da Bloods namecheck in the dialogue. Lee and his co-screenwriters Kevin Wilmott, and Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo also give a voice to Vietnamese characters and their feelings about ‘the American War.’ They are just as haunted by the past as Paul and his crew. Paul in particular is deeply entrenched in post-traumatic stress disorder, tormented by visions of Norman while drowning in survivor’s guilt.
“When not flashing back to the violent past of a war movie, Da 5 Bloods throws these men into an equally violent heist movie. Lee is aided and abetted by Newton Thomas Siegel’s clever cinematography, Terrence Blanchard’s complex score, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Goin’ On album and actors who are game for anything. Standing at the forefront is Delroy Lindo, who gives the second best performance Lee has ever directed. Paul is more than just a troll for MAGA’s, he’s a complicated, scared and scarred man. Lindo is unafraid to go to the heart of darkness within his character, showing his fearlessness in a terrifying tour-de-force scene where he addresses Lee’s unflinching camera. His scenes with Boseman, so perfectly cast as a specter of Black Power, haunt the viewer long after the credits roll. Before they do, Lee alternates his dramatic fiction with scenes of real people and events, from Muhammad Ali to Dr. King to the famous pictures of war carnage that were beamed into televisions every night on the news. This overstuffed pastiche shouldn’t hold together as brilliantly as it does, but Lee’s a master juggler who keeps all his pins up in the air.”
Odie Henderson is a regular contributor at RogerEbert.com. Much of his previous work can be found at Big Media Vandalism.
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