Spike Lee’s next movie, the Netflix-produced “Da 5 Bloods,” was test-screened on November 25th in Brooklyn. Word-of-mouth was excellent, I received a few email reactions about it, all positive. The runtime given to me back in November was that of 2 hours and 30 minutes, well, today it has been confirmed that the official runtime for Lee’s next movie will be 155 minutes [via Netflix]
Let’s see how long this Spike Lee “comeback” can last.
I wrote back in December:
“The “BlacKkKlansman” director had a solid outing with the aforementioned movie last year, which was deemed a comeback of sorts after a rough 10-year stretch of films that included “Miracle at St. Anna,” “Red Hook Summer,” “Oldboy,” “Da Sweet Blood of Jesus” and, to a lesser extent, “Chiraq.” Those were the five worst Lee movies of his career (as far as I’m concerned).”
“And this is coming from an unadorned fan of his. Lee could practically do nothing wrong in my books between his 1986 debut “She’s Gotta Have It” all the way to 2006’s heist flick, “Inside Man” (let’s pretend 2004’s misbegotten “She Hate Me” doesn’t exist). The Lee filmography speaks for itself, really: “Do the Right Thing,” “Jungle Fever,” “Malcolm X,” “The 25th Hour,” “Summer of Sam,” and his most vastly underrated movie, which, quite curiously, is the most pertinently relevant film for 2019, “Bamboozled.”
An East Coast critic went to a private screening of “Da 5 Bloods” and was absolutely floored by it. He sent me this short review:
It’s slick. A fast-paced 165-minute Vietnam war film. It’s not your typical type of war flick though. It’s a bunch of aging veterans returning to Ho Chi Minh City in present day. The reason they’re there is because the “5th Blood” (played by Chadwick Boseman only in flashbacks) was murdered in action. They’re returning to find his body, dog tag, but also millions of dollars worth of Gold that they buried all the way back in Vietnam. So they voyage off into the jungle and reconnect with one another. It’s not comparable in quality or even scope, but there’s a sort of Last Flag Flying sense of bonding between these men all leaving different lives from when they knew each other. It follows a similar approach in its political commentary as his last film, he opens with a montage of the violence of the late 60s/70s set to Marvin Gaye — there’s a lot of Marvin Gaye in this, and he uses it so well, all fitting in smoothly and establishing a rhythmic momentum from the start. I saw with two other critics, and they both loved. It’s a strong work and it’s apparent Netflix gave him creative control to create his vision.
“Da 5 Bloods” circles around a group of Vietnam veterans who return to southeast Asia to find who they were before the war. Chadwick Boseman leads the starry cast which also includes Delroy Lindo and Jean Reno.
Following “Air,” this is Affleck’s latest stint behind the camera. He has cast himself in the lead role, alongside Kerry Washington, Steven Yeun, and Gillian Anderson (“The X-Files”).