SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
Highly stylised direction from Spike Lee transforms Da 5 Bloods into an incisive piece of commentary on race in America, but one that sags under the weight of a plot overburdened with dissonant tones.
If there’s one phrase that easily sums up Spike Lee’s latest film, it’s “unfinished business”. Whether it’s the Vietnam War or slavery, Lee takes aim at the open wounds on the American psyche, bringing them together in an attempt to draw attention to the painful experiences of African Americans both past and present. At a time when the Black Lives Matter movement sweeps across the United States and the rest of the Western world, Da 5 Bloods and its famous director seem poised to seize this moment in order to deliver some cutting social commentary. But despite taking an accurate reading of America’s pulse, Lee and crew somehow never quite make it all the way, with his latest film turning out to be quite the mess. It powers forward, thanks to the efforts of its cast and no shortage of style and flair, but the lack of focus in its narrative ultimately proves to be a shot in the foot.
With Da 5 Bloods, Lee weaves a tale about the Bloods, a group of aging black Vietnam War veterans who return to Vietnam to find the remains of their deceased squad leader Norm, and to recover the stash of treasure they buried there during their tour. The temptation to revisit the Vietnam War has proven irresistible for storytellers of all stripes: a by-product of America’s ignominious exit from Indochina in the mid-70s. The lingering wounds of slavery and the fight for justice by the Civil Rights movement represent yet more unresolved conflict. We use film as a way to try and make sense of both past and present.
But Lee isn’t totally successful. It’s sometimes a struggle to grasp the links he draws between what’s happening right now and the black experience of Vietnam simply because there’s too much going on, and the film never settles on a tone. At points it’s comic, at others it’s deadly serious, and the power of that dissonance to undermine quickly becomes evident. As the film’s characters begin to lose their grip on reality, the tonal disharmony begins to muddy the proverbial waters. It’s not clear exactly what his characters want to do and why, though they frequently rant at each other to settle those issues. We’re left to assume that there’s something we missed in the dialogue, which is frequently composed of word salad. There are ways to mix these dissonant tones, but with Da 5 Bloods, Lee seems to settle for sticking them awkwardly together with superglue, trading a story with razor-sharp focus for a complicated jumble of themes, tones and plotlines that’s truly dizzying in scope.
But perhaps the confusion is inherent. A lot of war films make it clear that the experience is one of absolute chaos and as for depicting our current day, nobody really seems to know what’s going on right now either. A film about a chaotic past and a confusing present is itself bound to lack clarity. But at least Lee and the cast pull no punches. Lee intersperses and caps his film with archive footage, from Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X and Muhammed Ali to Donald Trump, exposing a daring sense of theatricality that gives this film the energy to power forward. We cut back and forth between the present and flashbacks of the war, filmed on a deliciously period grainy 16mm film. The cinematography is superb, with slick camera work and visceral, frequently gruesome action sequences as bursts of Marvin Gaye come on to accompany this bizarre mix of comedy, drama and action.
Delroy Lindo deserves many a place come awards season, with a particularly phenomenal performance as the pseudo-leader of this band of veterans, screaming profanity at a Vietnamese man who slags him off as a GI who killed his family, and bringing an impressive sense of physicality to his scenes. There’s an undeniable sense of camaraderie, shared experience and brotherhood amongst our leading men. Chadwick Boseman has a self-assured charisma and charm as Norm, anchoring this group of men even though he scarcely appears. Veronica Ngo delivers an unnervingly smooth performance as Hanoi Hannah, whose pointed radio broadcasts prod our heroes into questioning why they’re fighting a white man’s war when black people are being persecuted at home. But aside from her, this film doesn’t quite do right by its Asians, who at best lack the depth given to our main characters and at worst are rendered facile stereotypes. The plight of Amerasians, the abandoned mixed-race children who were themselves discriminated against, is easily glossed over: a victim of Lee’s tendency to try and cover far too many topics at once.
Lee manages – albeit messily – to get his overall message across, even if the finer points remain elusive. I also appreciate its timeliness and the choice to show the Vietnam War from a rarely seen perspective. I’m not entirely sure that I liked Da 5 Bloods, but I find myself incapable of dismissing it because there is genuinely some fine work on show, and I most definitely like the way it dares to get up close, personal and in your face. Not many films have that kind of attitude.
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