Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods” comes post-mortem after the entire country went through close to two weeks of protests and riots due to the murder of George Floyd. The timing, you might say, couldn’t be more appropriate; after all, Lee, always the political firecracker, infuses his latest film with snap-a-minute political undertones at every turn. It’s a no-brainer that critics will fall for this movie-of-the-moment, even if, and bear with me here, if the end result is nothing short of an incoherent mess.
Kicking off with archival news footage featuring Muhammad Ali refusing to be drafted, Malcolm X expressing what happens when “you take 20 million black people and make them fight all your wars” and Bobby Seale shelling out facts about the hundreds of thousands of black men who fought in the Civil War, World War II, and Vietnam, “Da 5 Bloods” sets out to be uber-political from the get-go. It’s no surprise at all, especially when you consider Lee’s fervently political filmography, from “Do the Right Thing” to “Malcolm X”, the legendary filmmaker has never been shy to express his mind, even if it meant a scolding from the naysayers.
Debuting on Netflix on June 12th, “Da 5 Bloods” deals with four emotionally damaged African-American veterans who return to Vietnam to recover the body of their fallen brother and, oh yeah, to dig up the gold bars they buried during combat back in the day. The four remaining “bloods,” as Black soldiers called themselves, meet up in 2020 at a hotel in Ho Chi Minh City to begin their mission. Paul (an intense Delroy Lindo) is the Trump voter of the group; his fellow bloods don’t agree with him wearing a MAGA hat. Eddie (Norm Lewis), the owner of a national car dealership, is the wealthy one. Otis (Clarke Peters) and Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) are the sane ones who try to tame their fellow brothers. They all idolize fallen squad leader, Stormin’ Norman (Chadwick Boseman), who is seen in flashbacks teaching them the ropes in the jungles of My Lai. As these bloods push into that same jungle, with the help of Paul’s son David (Jonathan Majors) to find the gold bars and bring back Norman’s remains to the U.S.A, their greed leads to betrayal as the brothers start turning on each other.
Sounds familiar? From John Huston’s “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” to, more recently, J.C. Chandor’s “Triple Frontier,” what Lee is tackling here is nothing new. The only difference is that he infuses his film with African-American faces and boldly passionate fervor that cannot be denied. The problem is that Lee, always the rabble-rouser, can sometimes let his passion get the best of him. “Da 5 Bloods” is well-intentioned, but wholly messy, and even clumsily edited and filmed.
Cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel (Bohemian Rhapsody) shoots the present-day scenes in beautiful wide-screen glory, but the flashbacks, using grainy photography, with the same actors playing younger versions of themselves, are uninvolving. It doesn't help that Lee decides to use Marvin Gaye’s seminal 1971 album “What’s Going On” as the background music for his film. I get it, the album was, and still is, the essential work of Vietnam-era protest song, but a little more creativity and a little less obviousness would have helped in selecting the soundtrack for this film.
Adapting a script by Oliver Stone, who was also supposed to direct, about white soldiers Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo, Lee and co-writer Kevin Willmott decided to blackwash it and turn it into the first-ever Vietnam movie seen through the eyes of black soldiers. It’s about time. But, much like the stink bomb he created with 2008’s film, “The Miracle of St. Anna,” about the unsung contribution of black soldiers in WWII, Lee can’t seem to get a firm grasp of his narrative here. The setup is a slog to get through, consisting mostly of banter and background story to develop our four main bloods, but the result is scattershot, the dialogue never fully believable and the caricatures too on-the-nose.
It takes a full 90 minutes for the treasure hunt to finally begin, and when it does, it feels non-consequential, with inevitable backstabbing, dubious decisions on the part of the characters, and predictably bland outcomes. At some point, without even the word “landmine” mentioned and more than a few minutes before it even occurred, I absolutely knew that one of these characters was about to step on one of those bad boys and have his body ripped to shreds, the set-up and shot selection too obvious not to know.
Lee has directed two worthy movies in the last 15 years (“Inside Man” and “BlackKklansman”). During that span, the same rough filmmaking that shows up in “Da 5 Bloods” has also seeped through the frames of some of the worst movies of his career (“Miracle at St. Anna,” “She Hate Me,” “Da Sweet Blood of Jesus,” “Red Hook Summer”).
“Da 5 Bloods” is a gigantic tonal collage with no cohesion to its narrative. It also clocks in at a deranged 154-minute runtime. What it, sadly, proves, however, is a decline in storytelling skills on the part of Lee, a lack of editing and focus as well. Spike’s message might be in the right place with this film, but the end result is a confusing collage of politics, entertainment, and ego. The right timing might be kind to “Da 5 Bloods,” but time won’t be. [D+]
Criterion's December lineup has some great additions to the library, but the title that jumped out at me is Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man," which officially joins the Collection on December 8.