Is Da 5 Blood any good? Worth your time? Complete Review

Spike Lee has shown up with an insurgent filmic uproar to match the uproar in the world today. Da 5 Bloods is a paintball gun loaded with real bullets. It is a blast of satire and emotional agony about race and the American empire.

The film holds many important themes that seem extremely relevant to black rights today. Some of them are the evergreen wound of Vietnam, African-American sacrifices on the field of battle, and the fact that black deaths matter.

1. Quick Review

In Da 5 Bloods, director Spike Lee attempts to unpack the entire history of the black American wartime experience. He does so by honoring the first black man who died fighting for a country that didn’t fight back for him. He also connects it back to something as urgent as the murder of George Floyd.

Its tale spans decades. The story sends four black Vietnam veterans back to their old battleground. On a quest to locate and repatriate the remains of their commander, who was killed in combat.

Now, years later, each of them are damaged in their own way. While one of them is broke, another is riddled with PTSD. They decide to combine their rescue mission with a treasure hunt for something they hid years ago, for a rainy day.

2. Is it worth watching?

Da 5 Bloods runs two hours and thirty-four minutes, but it’s not a second too long. On the contrary, it feels compressed. It bustles with a frenzied intellectual and dramatic energy. The action is intense, furious, yet parsed with a magisterial assurance.

Da 5 Bloods | Official Trailer | Netflix

The teeming profusion of events that Lee dramatizes is inseparable from the historiography that he foregrounds throughout. Both are brought to life with an intricately varied texture of dialogue and gesture.

Thanks to an extraordinary cast of actors who blend fervor and nuance, Lee directs with manifested inspiration.

The script was written by Lee and Kevin Willmott, who reworked an original version by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo. It offers the actors a dazzling emotional spectrum that they’ve brought to life.

I. Plot

The film tells the story of four Vietnam War veterans and lifelong friends, distanced but not estranged. They regroup in Ho Chi Minh City with a dual mission: to recover the body of their former commanding officer and to collect a stash of gold bars that they’d found and buried. Da 5 Blood is outrun by the mercurial dialogue, the memories that arise, the traumas that come to the fore.

Otis (played by Clarke Peters) is running the expedition from behind the scenes. Melvin (played by Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) has something of a skeptical conscience.

Eddie (played by Norm Lewis) is a glad-handing businessman with bourgeois habits and styles. The big and gruff Paul (played by Delroy Lindo) is a Trump supporter, maga cap and all.

Paul’s political position is roundly mocked by his friends, but they soon learn that he is deeply damaged. He suffers from P.T.S.D. and carries the agony of his commanding officer Norman’s killing. The characters are vast and have been elaborately portrayed by their actors.

II. Music & visuals

The music director of the film is Terrence Blanchard. He has composed the music for 15 Lee films in the past, including Oscar-winning BlacKkKlansman and Malcolm X. Da 5 Bloods’ soundtrack aligns with a specific time in history.

Loaded with several Marvin Gaye classics and R&B hits, the movie’s songs channel the cultural energy of the early ’70s. Soul classics peppered in between enriching the feel of Lee’s film. The songs in the film include Bring The Boys Home by Freda Payne; I’m Coming Home by The Spinner, and a handful of songs by Marvin Gaye.

In addition to the verbal commentary about present events vs. past ones, Lee also employs some sly visual representations of his points. There is the occasional jump to graphic documentary footage.

Through this, we’re also reminded that the Vietnam War was beamed into the homes of millions of Americans via the nightly news. This forced them to see the atrocities in such an effective way.

In another scene, one of the men wears a Morehouse shirt throughout his jungle trek. It’s more than just a shout-out to the director’s alma mater. It’s a reminder that the college kids didn’t wind up in this location.

3. Final Thoughts

On paper, that premise would probably remind you of The Treasure of Sierra Madre. However, what Lee tries to do through his film is to re-contextualize the war movie and popular cinema from a black perspective. The inclusivity of black people’s stories in the dominant narrative of world wars is pertinent to black rights movements.

Spike Lee pulls the traumas of black men’s experiences of the Vietnam War out of obscurity and puts them in the forefront of political consciousness. He could have merely offered a corrective or footnote to a chapter of American history. Instead, he transforms their stories into a new and improved cinematic mythology.

He makes sure to create one that exalts the unacknowledged heroism of black Americans. He creates a place for them at the center of modern culture, and, in the process, redefines American heroism.

4. Grade

5. Info