Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods” is an unparalleled masterpiece that reframes the U.S. existential crisis of the Vietnam War through the continuum of the black experience. It’s a feat of technical technicolour prowess, of a deep bag of good old movie-making tricks refreshed in their fusion with new ones. It’s blazing with love and searing with pain, both timeless and right on time. In fact it’s a movie of this precise moment in 2020 that I’m almost positive that Mr Lee (Spike) is plugged into the frequency of the universe.
Four black veterans (Delroy Lindo, Norm Lewis, Clark Peters and Isiah Whitlock Jr) reunite in Vietnam for a pilgrimage to locate the remains of a fallen ‘blood’ (Chadwick Boseman). Their secret mission is to find a cache of gold that they discovered during an ambush and buried to collect at a later date. The promise of their bounty requires enlisting the help of Otis’ (Peters) old flame Tien Luu (Y. Lan) to mediate a deal with a shady French smuggler – the reptilian Desroche (Jean Reno) – to help move and cash out their prize.
“Da 5 Bloods” has a dynamic aesthetic textured with vibrant digital photography, tactical 16mm film stock, and toggling aspect ratio (4:3 to 16:9 to 2.35:1). This technique to alter the aspect ratio/stock serves to identify jumps through time. The film is peppered with archival footage of Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Dr Martin Luther King Jr, footage from ‘Da Moon’ landing and much more.
First Spike and cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel set the socio-political context for the characters and the discontent rattling through these conflicted men. Spike doesn’t use new actors or de-ageing tech wizardry to show his characters through time. Instead, they play their younger selves precisely as they are in the present. Spike asks the audience to suspend their disbelief for a moment, and it plays beautifully. Memories are reframed continuously by who we are today; so seeing these older actors playing their younger selves, becomes a more impressionistic, interior, account of their personal history.
Despite the variety of voices involved, screenwriters Danny Bilson, Paul De Meo, Kevin Willmott and the academy award-winning Lee himself give clarity to each of the four men, the motivation fuelling their return beyond the promise of gold. There’s humour, tolerance and compassion for the flawed men that they are, rather than ideal for how they should appear.
The aftermath of the war for Vietnam is cultural and ideological invasion, displaced Asian/Black children the living reminders of the “play” from the American G.I. population. This final tour of Vietnam stares into uncomfortable truths, they fought an immoral war for rights they didn’t have; and the war still rages. These revelations play out like a prophecy as Communist radio D.J. Hanoi Hannah (the deliberate and poised Van Veronica Ngo) broadcasts disruptive messages of solidarity to the black soldiers during the conflict.
Spike, ever the cinephile, litters the film with intertextual references. Yes “Apocalypse Now” but it’s less homage and more a sign of respect to the impact of the film and the sacrifice of ‘Godfather’, Francis Ford Coppola. You feel the anxiety and paranoia of “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” You hear pep talks reminiscent of “Gallipoli” (to name a few). Terence Blanchard’s score gives the film its classical timbre but inspired Marvin Gaye needle drops, including an a cappella version of “What’s Going On” that will tear out your soul.
Delroy Lindo gets to wail on the performative equivalent of Jimmy Page soaring guitar solo in this movie. He plays Paul, a man so riddled with pain, despair and rage that Lindo’s usual rigid frame pulse’s and contorts like a landscape in the aftermath of an earthquake. Lindo’s Paul may have been able to keep a lid on his PTSD in the waking life back on the home-front, but being back in Vietnam is disrupting his equilibrium. Lindo is reliably terrific in every film or T.V. show that he’s in, but Spike lets this man’s internal apocalypse have his Kurtz-esque showcase. In a scintillating, often fourth-wall-breaking, hypnotic, penetrating meltdown.
Jonathan Majors plays Paul’s opportunistic son David who surprises his father in Vietnam to help in exchange for a share of the bounty. The cost of being a terrible father as it were. Their chemistry is explosive, when they’re close, you begin clenching for the fireworks.
“The Wire” alumni Clarke Peters and Isiah Whitlock Jr. play Otis and Melvin. Peters is the brains of this operation and a stabilising force. When Peters’ Otis contracta wartime prostitute turned importer/exporter Tien Luu, he’s got a surprise waiting. Whitlock Jr. brings his infectious ball busting timing to Melvin, helping to keep the mission on course when egos threaten to derail them. Norm Lewis is terrific as the pigeon-toed Eddie. He’s a flash, pride-filled, peacock desperate to avoid drowning in the reality of a life where setbacks have consumed his fortune.
Spike’s casting of Chadwick Boseman as departed Stormin’ Norman is inspired. Boseman’s star-making, Marvel hero “Black Panther”, is nothing compared to Stormin’ Norman’s sanctified icon. He’s flawless, imbued with the collective leadership forces of Dr King and Malcolm X, a supreme modern warrior. In David Chappelle’s reactionary special “8:46” he says “any [black] man who survives this nightmare is my f–king hero.” With that fresh in mind, we forgive the nostalgia.
Another Spike Lee movie ends, and all I can hear ringing in my ears are the words of the great Roger Ebert. In his review of “Do The Right Thing” in 1989, he wrote that “[Do The Right Thing] comes closer to reflecting the current state of race relations in America than any other movie of our time.” Spike Lee’s body of work is a weaponised mirror of Black Lives in America. Nobody does it better.
