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Da 5 Bloods Movie Review

Da 5 Bloods is a 2020 war drama film directed by Spike Lee and starring Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors and Clarke Peters. It’s a strong, but unfortunately messy film.

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“After you’ve been in a war,

you understand it never really ends“

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It follows a group of aging Vietnam War veterans who return to the country in search of the remains of their fallen squad leader, as well as the treasure they buried while serving there. This film is a mix of many different movies and ideas, but above all else it felt very much like a modern version of ‘The Treasure of the Sierra Madre’. I adore that classic movie, so that’s why the film’s middle segment was incredibly enjoyable.

My favorite scene is the one where they found gold. That was such an exciting, adventurous plot point, and in particular the moment when they found the corpse of their deceased friend was heartbreaking and so well executed. These kinds of powerful scenes are so magnificent that they make me wish that the entire movie was greater than the sum of its parts.

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The director made the decision to shoot the Vietnam War scenes in a reduced aspect ratio, which definitely made an impact as it felt different from the present day scenes, but still those sequences felt very cheap, which was unfortunate. I do get that it was an artistic choice, but I would have gone about it differently myself.

Thankfully, the movie is mostly set in present day, which was a refreshing choice that led to a film that isn’t directly about this war, but about the PTSD and the results of it on the psyche of soldiers. It explores their past and how it impacted their present so well.

The main reason why I would categorize Da 5 Bloods as an utter mess lies in its all or nothing approach, which I am not in favor of at all. What I mean by that is that the director unsuccessfully attempted to throw in so many ideas that eventually they all crumbled beneath each other. There is an argument to be made that the film is about greed, PTSD of soldiers and the experience of black soldiers in the Vietnam War, and those surely are its best realized themes.

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However, it also tries to deal with the reception of mixed-race people of Asian and African-American descent, the current US politics, Donald Trump and at the very end he decided to include Martin Luther King, Jr. as well as the Black Lives Matter movement. To me, that was a reach to appeal to modern audiences and to make the film more timely and relevant, but the movie had nothing to do with that previously, so it felt very miscalculated.

Still, I appreciated the adventure elements in Da 5 Bloods and I wanted more of those. The present day scenes are well shot, but again Spike Lee’s direction is more messy than great. The performances, though, are excellent. It was nice seeing Jonathan Majors of ‘The Last Black Man in San Francisco’ fame, and he’s great here as David. Everyone else is also terrific, but the standout is Delroy Lindo who plays the most fascinating, most complicated person powerfully. His character is the best one, but the interactions between them all are wonderful. They’re great friends and some of the playful dialogue here is superb.

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Da 5 Bloods is an utter mess of a movie, which is unfortunate as it could have been terrific, but it ended up being just very good. The friendship at the core of the movie is great, their interactions are wonderful, the dialogue is strong and in particular Delroy Lindo is the standout as he played so well the most complex character of the bunch. The middle gold-searching segment is the standout as it was quite adventurous and engaging. However, even though the film deals quite well with the experience of black soldiers in the Vietnam War as well as the effect that war had on their psyche, Spike Lee also decided to touch upon current race issues, US politics, Trump and even Black Lives Matter. As a result, his miscalculated direction where he opted to put every single idea into this project backfired and led to a significantly reduced impact of what is otherwise a pretty strong, interesting film. Thus, the movie is certainly greater individually than as a sum of its parts.

My Rating – 4

You can get the score from Da 5 Bloods on Amazon.