Movie Review: Spike Lee's "Da 5 Bloods" Reminds Us War Never Ends for Black Americans

It's even better than BlacKkKlansman.

With each new Spike Lee movie, there follows a string of articles pronouncing it the movie of the moment. Then comes the suspicion that his commentary on race relations in America is actually prophetic to the point of being supernatural. 'How’d he know that this stuff would be on everyone’s tongues when he was making the film?!'

His last feature, BlacKkKlansman, about a black cop infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan, arrived just as white supremacists and actual Nazis decided to rear their heads again publicly, emboldened by the election of US President Donald Trump.

His latest, Da 5 Bloods, a Netflix exclusive, ends with a group of activists chanting "Black Lives Matter", just as millions do the same all over the world in response to the extrajudicial killing of George Floyd by police officers.

But here’s the sad secret: Spike Lee is no soothsayer. His films never stop being timely because the times just won’t change. And even though it’s been his mission—since Do the Right Thing in 1989 and since Bamboozled in 2000 and since When the Levees Broke in 2006—to expose inequality, police brutality and the backwards culture that has welcomed and perpetuated racist stereotypes, neither America nor the world can seem to move itself forward. For as long as there has been cinema, we have needed a Spike Lee. We may always need Spike Lee. Pessimistic? We can at least be grateful that he's such a vibrant, furious, genre-spanning polemicist. The message may remain the same, but the packaging is always unexpected.

It so happens that Da 5 Bloods is a deliriously satisfying heist flick crossed with a war movie and a buddy comedy. It is a whole meal of a movie. Being—and this is amazing—the first Vietnam War picture to center on black soldiers, it stars Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis and Isiah Whitlock Jr. as four of the surviving '5 Bloods' who served together in 'Nam. They assemble in present day Ho Chi Minh City with the intention of recovering the body of their fallen leader, Stormin’ Norman, played in flashback by Chadwick Boseman. Lindo, Peters, Lewis and Whitlock Jr., all in their late fifties or sixties, play themselves as young bucks opposite Boseman too. Seems The Irishman used up all of Netflix’s de-aging budget. Still, when the actors are this good, we’ll take it.

All is well to begin with, despite Lindo’s damaged Paul being an avid MAGA hat-wearing Trump supporter now. Lee, who has never had trouble crafting indelible images (or cracking inside jokes), gets them reacquainted by having the foursome dance towards the camera as Marvin Gaye’s "Got to Give It Up" plays at an Apocalypse Now-themed club. But the good times are halted when Paul discovers his son, David (Jonathan Majors), has followed them, knowing full well the Bloods are actually back in Vietnam to pick up a crate of gold bars they left with Norm’s corpse back in the day. It had always been the righteous Norm’s intention to give that gold back to black organisations. Unfortunately, not everyone on the journey feels the same.

Originally penned by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo, the script was reprocessed by Lee and his fellow Oscar-winning co-writer on BlacKkKlansman, Kevin Wilmot, giving the script its black lead characters (and the title’s 'da'). They’re a perfect pair. Like BlacKkKlansman, a recognisable cop movie albeit one drenched in Lee's style, Da 5 Bloods benefits from a streamlined story, this time keeping the audience engaged in the thrills and spills of the Bloods surviving an attack on their downed helicopter (in the flashback) and their treasure hunt (in the present). The picture also has a maddeningly effective device to draw out tension: Prior to heading out, David meets a crew of landmine-defusers, reminding the audience that the jungles of Vietnam are a danger. Later, when the Bloods bring out the metal detector to find their gold, and the beeps increase tantalisingly, we tense up waiting for the earth to erupt. With the assistance of charismatic stars, cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel and composer Terence Blanchard, Lee has made a cracking adventure; the largest in scope of his career.

But Da 5 Bloods is also a pivotal and pointed Spike Lee Joint too. Lindo, as the volcanic Paul, oscillates from sympathetic to repugnant throughout. However, we want to see his redemption as he teeters towards villainy, because we know all too well what made him this way. In a powerful soliloquy, Lindo, giving an overall spectacular performance, lands the killer blow. "You made me malignant," he spits, adding, "You will not kill Paul. You hear me?" And then, peering down the barrel of the camera: "The US government will not take me out." One scene earlier, the Bloods’ long walk is scored by Marvin Gaye’s anti-war tune "What’s Going On", except with the music track dropped out. Gaye’s crooning now sounds more like a plea. Lee never lets the audience-friendly nature of Da 5 Bloods interrupt his central argument. There is no mistaking what he’s saying here; how the treatment of black soldiers as cannon fodder during the civil rights movement is just another example of black bodies being brutalised and murdered by the state. Some have historically criticised Lee for hammering home his points too hard. Recent suggest he’s not yet hammering hard enough.

4.5/5

Da 5 Bloods is now streaming on Netflix. Rated MA15+ for strong themes, strong violence, strong blood and gore.