Da 5 Bloods (2020)

Directed by: Spike Lee | 154 minutes | adventure, drama | Actors: Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Mélanie Thierry, Paul Walter Hauser, Jasper Pääkkönen, Johnny Nguyen, Y. Lan, Lam Nguyen, Sandy Huong Pham, Jean Reno, Chadwick Boseman, Veronica Ngo, Anh Tuan Nguyen

In most films about the Vietnam War – at least the well-known ones – you have to search for African-American soldiers with a magnifying glass. While black armed forces played a prominent role. In total, some 300,000 African American soldiers served in Vietnam. Although it was officially the first war in which white and black Americans fought side by side against the same opponent, in practice the phenomenon of segregation still existed. Particularly after the assassination of Martin Luther King, several racist incidents took place within various US army units. The imbalances and institutional racism within the US military system are also clearly visible in the distribution of the Medals of Honor; of the more than 3,500 medals of honor to be distributed, only 92 went to black soldiers, 22 of whom earned these for their activities during the Vietnam War.

It’s high time for a little recognition, too, thought filmmaker Spike Lee, for whom this theme is grist to the mill. Almost all of his films are laced with political messages and almost always the unequal relationship between black and white Americans is central. However, Lee sometimes has a hand in pushing his – in principle very valuable – message down the throat of his audience, with the result that his film becomes more of a political pamphlet than a compelling and cohesive whole. That is precisely why, for example, ‘Do the Right Thing’ (1989), ‘Malcolm X’ (1992) and more recently ‘BlacKkKlansman’ (2018) have succeeded, but films like ‘Bamboozled’ (2000) and ‘Miracle at St. Anna’ (2008) miss the mark. With his war drama ‘Da 5 Bloods’ (2020), shot for Netflix, Lee is somewhere in between. The idea for a film about four war veterans who return to Vietnam after years to deal with their shared traumas was launched in 2013 and Oliver Stone (who already has a Vietnam film to his credit with ‘Platoon’ (1986) of course) was launched in 2013. tied up for directing. However, he dropped out after a few years, after which Spike Lee came into the picture. Together with co-writer Kevin Wilmott, he added his own sauce: the characters became African-American, flashback scenes were added to the story and the role of the tragic fifth member of their team was expanded. Initially, Samuel L. Jackson, Denzel Washington, Giancarlo Esposito and John David Washington were to play the lead roles, but because production did not get started and other projects came their way, they dropped out. Their replacements are certainly not without merit, but ‘star power’ has of course lost a considerable amount.

As we know from Spike Lee, ‘Da 5 Bloods’ starts with a series of archive images, to create context and to underline once again the political tone he wants to convey. The message from a conscientious objector Mohamed Ali continues to come through loud and clear, emphasizing Lee’s desire to end the whitewashing of Vietnam War coverage. Then we meet four friends Paul (Delroy Lindo), Otis (Clarke Peters), Eddie (Norm Lewis) and Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr.). Years after fighting together in the Vietnam War, they meet again in Ho Chi Min City. They plan not only to reminisce, but also to retrieve the remains of their team’s leader, Stormin’ Norman (Chadwick Boseman), so that he can still be buried in his homeland. They also set their sights on excavating the dozens of kilograms of gold bars that they accidentally got their hands on at the time and buried near Norman’s body. When meeting guide Vinh (Johnny Tri Nguyen), Lee immediately shows that the Vietnamese are not the real enemies, but the white establishment. He subtly humanizes the nameless and faceless Vietnamese in many films. If only the whole movie was so subtle…

By the way, they go into the jungle without Vinh. Who does come along is David (Jonathan Majors), Paul’s son with whom he has a troubled relationship. Paul is a troubled man anyway; Unlike his three friends, he suffers from PTSD and his traumas influence the way he lives life. Wearing a ‘Make America Great Again’ cap (we said it already, not very subtle) he waltzes through the jungle like a ticking time bomb. Lindo gets plenty of room to distinguish himself, unlike the other three protagonists. Fortunately, Clarke Peters (like Isiah Whitlock known from the great series ‘The Wire’) still has her own storyline, with which Lee wants to show that many African-American soldiers have illegitimate children in Vietnam and that those children are also confronted with racism. to have. Their mothers also carry a stigma. But Eddie and Melvin are significantly less developed. While Chadwick Boseman’s contribution is modest, it is crucial to the main plot. The fact that we know his own tragic history makes his performance extra intense and in a sense also wry. What a talent he was! A subplot surrounding the landmine club of the Frenchwoman Hedy (Mélanie Thierry) and a shady deal with a shady businessman played by Jean Reno who wants to help the men smuggle the gold out of the country seem to be dragged by their hair and mainly distract from the physical and mental quest of these four damaged men. Of the 143 minutes that the film lasts, at least thirty could have been deleted.

Lee is too eager to say too much in his films, with which he regularly contradicts himself. ‘Da 5 Bloods’ is another mishmash of genres, ranging from drama to comedy, from war film to road movie and from action to heist film. It is a patchwork of styles and genres, where the individual patches are not neatly sewn together but are attached with only a few stitches. Lee seizes even more means to enrich his film, for example a handful of winks, whether or not ostentatious, to (war) classics such as ‘Apocalypse Now’ (1979), ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’ (1957) and ‘The Treasure of the Sierra Madre’ (1948). He also does namedropping, in such a way that you are completely taken out of the film for an aside about a historical figure. Again the question: could it not have been more subtle? A stylistic device that does work is Lee’s choice to only show Norman as a young man in the flashbacks. He does this to emphasize that they are not actually flashbacks but memories of the past that Paul, Otis, Eddie and Melvin have in the present. It also symbolizes that no matter how old they are, their experiences in the war have always stayed with them and will never go away.

With ‘Da 5 Bloods’ Spike Lee has created a messy and chock-full but fascinating whole of styles and genres, with one choice he makes better than the other. There is little you can say about the fact that he is propagating a message that needs to be told and that is still urgent and topical in 2020, too. But the unsubtle way in which he wants to make his point unfortunately comes at the expense of persuasiveness, coherence and clarity.