Iconic director Spike Lee’s latest film since 2018’s excellent, Best Picture-nominated BlacKkKlansman swims in the similar waters of a thrilling story set in the context of historical racial injustice, something that has been Lee’s bread and butter since the classic Do the Right Thing, and arguably something that no one else does better (time will tell if Jordan Peele carries this torch).
Da 5 Bloods is a modern retelling of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre set in Vietnam as four old vets return to the country to retrieve a case of gold bars they buried some 50 years ago. Like his previous film, Lee peppers the story with clips of stock footage of the time, opening with Muhammad Ali speaking on his refusal to go kill foreign strangers, and ranging from the ’69 Apollo 11 launch to Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their black-gloved fists at the ’68 Olympics. The effect is striking. The footage moves from civil rights protests to atrocities overseas when it transitions to present-day Saigon where the four surviving “bloods” are reunited in a hotel lobby.
Paul, Otis, Eddie and Melvin (played by the actors listed above, respectively) are then shown dancing through a club, drinks in hand, awash in the neon red lights while Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up” plays, putting Lee’s mesmerizing mise-en-scène and masterful use of music on full display. The four old friends commiserate over drinks, fondly remembering the fifth member of their group, their leader, and the only one not to make it out of ’Nam alive: Stormin’ Norman (played with proper charisma by Black Panther’s Chadwick Boseman). On the pretense of recovering his body for a proper burial, the four bloods set out on Norman’s original plan of retrieving the gold to give back to their black communities back home.
The flashbacks are told through the bombastic lens of an ’80s action film, recalling Rambo III or Missing in Action VHS cartridges viewed on an old cathode-ray tube television, complete with 4:3 aspect ratio. Rather than pull a Scorsese in The Irishman, Lee lets his elderly actors play their younger selves free of any CGI de-aging distraction device, giving these scenes the feeling of a surreal memory.
The specter of Norman haunts the film, but he haunts Delroy Lindo’s Paul the most. Having come away from the war the most damaged, Paul is a tortured man, and Lindo’s powerful portrayal of him is ferocious and empathetic. Lee has a knack for creating exciting and thrilling action/adventure tales that tackle issues on both a micro and macro scale.
Da 5 Bloods addresses everything from fatherhood, greed and distrust, to systemic racial injustice and the lasting physical and cultural effects of war and colonialism, and a lot of the thematic heavy lifting falls on Lindo’s shoulders. While that may sound too heavy for some, Lee’s greatest talent is contextualizing these deep themes in a consistently entertaining and thrilling (if only a hair too long) adventure. Da 5 Bloods is available to stream on Netflix.
