Mark Reviews Movies: DA 5 BLOODS

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 11, 2020

Director Spike Lee begins Da 5 Bloods with Muhammad Ali's famous explanation for why he resisted the draft. Following that, an opening montage shows two countries at war.

In Vietnam, American soldiers fight and die, Buddhist monks self-immolate in protest on the streets of Saigon, and a general from South Vietnam summarily executes a handcuffed member of the Viet Cong in front of a cameraman and a photographer (Most of us have seen the photo, showing the moment the bullet exits the barrel of the pistol, but Lee shows the filmed footage, too). In the United States, protests against the war erupt, the civil rights movement continues, and soldiers kill student protestors at a university, state police kill more at another college, and violence against civil rights advocates escalates.

The opening of Lee's new film isn't a strict history lesson, but it is a horrifying, sobering reminder that history is often written in blood, flames, hatred, and more sacrifice than seems essential for the self-evident necessity of peace and justice. We watch it unfold then, just as, outside of the film, we're watching it unfold now.

Lee, who also co-wrote the screenplay, doesn't overtly make that connection as his story moves from the past to the present, with a shot of Saigon at the end of the war transitioning into present-day Ho Chi Minh City, but he doesn't have to. The past had its horrors, and in focusing on them before a sudden shift into the present, we are immediately, if subconsciously, aware of our modern ones.

This film is entirely about such ideas—how the pains of the past define those of the present, how little the human and social foundations of violence and injustice evolve as the surface of society itself transforms, how war never really ends on a personal, political, societal, or human level. Lee and his fellow screenwriters Danny Bilson, Paul De Meo, and Kevin Willmott tackle a lot here. It leads to a seemingly meandering first act, but once the central plot—concerning a group of African-American Vietnam veterans searching for missing gold and the remains of a fallen comrade—takes focus, we realize how vital the screenplay's narrative diversions, character establishment, and political musings have been.

The veterans are the four surviving members of a squad who re-unite in Ho Chi Minh City. Eddie (Norm Lewis) has found apparent success with a chain of car dealerships. Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) still has his sense of humor, and Otis (Clarke Peters), a former Army medic who now runs his own medical practice, has another reason for returning to Vietnam—another reunion, with Tiên (Lê Y Lan), who has an unexpected surprise waiting for Otis.

All of these characters are important in terms of showing the bond, unbroken by time, between these men and how their lives have turned out in the decades after Vietnam, but the central figure here is Paul (Delroy Lindo), the fourth squad mate, whose mind has never left the war. Lindo's performance here is an exceptional piece of acting, naturalistic in his pain and rage, even as the film becomes more presentational of his plight (Late in the story, the character delivers a lengthy monologue directly to the camera).

Paul suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, although he'll deny it, becoming anxious and increasingly hostile whenever a local panhandler or vendor talks to him. Paul even voted for the sitting president, which stuns his friends—only for them to be further shocked when he puts on a particular red hat (The hat acts like a security blanket for Paul in one key moment, and later, it makes a couple of moves, tellingly, from a greedy killer to a betrayer).

He is still haunted by the death of the squad's charismatic and wise leader "Stormin'" Norman (Chadwick Boseman), who taught his men about Black history, gave them hope about life after the war, and calmed their rage when news of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. came over the waves of propaganda radio. In flashbacks (during which—in a striking re-creation of film stock of the era—the present-day actors play their characters' past selves, which maintains the thematic and emotional connections between the past and the present), we see Norman at his best and learn about the missing gold, which the squad found in a downed CIA plane shortly before Norman's death.

With Paul's son David (Jonathan Majors), who has arrived unannounced to keep an eye on his father, the squad takes a long trip down river. Lee borrows Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" for the voyage, doubly reminding us of another Vietnam War film—keeping our thoughts to the past through homage.

As the trek on the river and through the jungle continues, various conversations—thoughtful ones about the past and the current state of the world—are had. David meets Hedy (Mélanie Thierry), a French woman whose family made multiple fortunes exploiting Vietnam, who now runs a non-profit organization that finds and disposes of undetonated landmines and bombs. She and her team get involved in the plot later, but her introduction also serves as tension-generating foreshadowing and directly addressing the idea that, in spite of the past, people are still capable of doing good.

The core section of the plot involves the re-discovery of the gold, the fight over what should be done with it, the mounting tensions within the squad, and the assorted challenges—all of them, in some way, remnants of the past—that get in their way. The screenplay becomes a riff on a famous film about gold and greed (Paul gradually loses his mind over the treasure, and members of a local militia point out that they don't need "stinking badges"), but this isn't some kind of cheap rip-off. It keeps us and the plot grounded in the familiar, allowing the screenwriters to address their ideas about the ways in which the past and present merge.

As cynical as the material may seem, Lee does offer some hope throughout, especially in how he often repeats shots of little moments of tenderness between characters. It's never clearer, though, than during the epilogue of Da 5 Bloods. The possibilities and opportunities for change are right there. We just have to see and, more importantly, accept them.

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