Double crosses, red herrings, dead certainties and live land mines. Instead of using digital de-aging or look-alike casting, Lee places Whitlock, Lindo, Peters and Lewis alongside Boseman in the flashback scenes, which creates a sense of the uncanny immediacy of memory. by Nathaniel R. The New York Film Critics Circle have spoken, delivering their verdict on the Best of 2020. There is plenty of action, both in wartime and during the present day, which keeps the movie moving through its 157-minute runtime. Chadwick Boseman! Spike Lee's 'Da 5 Bloods' won multiple acting honors, while Kelly Reichardt's 'First Cow' took home the top prize. That’s an order!” Knowing they’re fighting an immoral war, knowing they have nothing against the Viet Cong. Four African American vets battle the forces of man and nature when they return to Vietnam seeking the remains of their fallen squad leader and the gold fortune he helped them hide. “We need to kill some crackers.” I had four screenings of this film for black and Puerto Rican Vietnam vets that they were there. ‘Da 5 Bloods’ – A Special Spoiler Review (With Analysis) June 13, 2020 June 17, ... Da 5 Bloods. Furious debates about ends and means, money and morality, capitalism and imperialism. “Da 5 Bloods” also has its own Mister Senor Daddy Love, a disc jockey Greek chorus represented here by Hanoi Hannah (Van Veronica Ngo). There’s also commentary on just how White these movies were, with people like Chuck Norris and Sylvester Stallone achieving mythic glory while blithely erasing the fact that 32% of the soldiers in the jungle were Black. They refer to him as “our Malcolm and our Martin.” When the borders of the frame narrow and the color balance shifts to signify that we are back in the war, Norman is played by Chadwick Boseman, a casting choice that underlines the heroism of the character, who is stamped with the likeness of Jackie Robinson and T’Challa. Da 5 Bloods foregoes CGI de-aging (or the simple act of casting younger actors) in its flashbacks. With Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis. I was 11 years old, and also the Vietnam War was the first war that was televised into American homes. Read full review ‘Da 5 Bloods’ on Netflix: Film Review Spike Lee explores the twin traumas of the war in Vietnam and racial injustice at home in an ambitious but uneven adventure movie committed to … Da 5 Bloods Review: Its extended runtime may prove a bit of a drag in moments, but thanks to compelling themes, diverse characters and powerful performances from its ensemble cast, it … If Sigel is the MVP of the imagery, Terence Blanchard and Marvin Gaye rule the soundtrack. A shot of him just shooting the shit with an Afro pick rising up from the back of his head carries enough unapologetic Blackness to power a nuclear reactor of revolution. They’ve come back to a place that, as Vinh points out, they’ve figuratively never left. Rounding out the quartet is the forceful, hot-headed leader, Paul, played by Delroy Lindo in one of the best performances to come out of a Spike Lee joint. Da 5 Bloods Movie Review today! It’s also an argument with and through the history of film. While the heart of the story takes place in current day, flashbacks, historical documents, newsreel footage, and photographs augment Lee's powerful exploration of war and race over half a century. Spike Lee’s excellent “Da 5 Bloods” opens with Muhammad Ali and closes with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., two legends who are inextricably tied to the Civil Rights movement and Black pride. “Da 5 Bloods” is a lesser Lee movie — honestly, it’s a mess — whose characterizations of Vietnamese people are inextricable from its political failures. “That’s right, I voted for him,” Paul declares. “I’m as mad as everybody. You have to think long and hard to come up with a movie that focuses so intently on the aftermath of war on Black soldiers (“Mudbound” and “Dead Presidents” come to mind, but they also have other stories to tell.). Everyone knows what Spike Lee thinks of the current president, but everyone should also remember that Lee often shows an almost affectionate interest in characters whose views he finds abhorrent. And even as it takes up unfinished real-world business at home and in Vietnam, “Da 5 Bloods” wrestles with some of the defining myths and motifs of American cinema. NOW PLAYING: other Da 5 Bloods: Video Review Common Sense Media. His pain is the motor and the moral of the story. 0. Da 5 Bloods Review: Spike Lee's Latest Is Another Winner for Netflix. Directed by Spike Lee. “He’s expensive,” she tells Otis before naming his price of 20% of the take. By Chris Agar Jun 13, 2020. But Lee has always been a master of using the cinematic tropes that have always worked as an okey-doke: the left hand lures you in with the familiar before the right hand blindsides you with the unexpected punching power of the intended point. Stormin’ Norman also puts the trunk of gold bars they discover in a downed CIA plane into context—he sees it as much deserved reparations, a repurposing of funds that were originally slated for Vietnamese people who provided information to the U.S. That gold can’t leave Vietnam in its current condition, so outside forces are necessary to assist. Odie "Odienator" Henderson has spent over 33 years working in Information Technology. But this superb, haunting contraption belongs to Delroy Lindo, whose complicated work here almost rivals Denzel Washington’s turn in “Malcolm X.” Lee always knows how to play the actor’s size and toughness alongside, and against, his vulnerability, and Lindo has never been afraid to plumb the depths of raw, naked emotion that would terrify actors worried about what constitutes a manly image. There’s also Vinh (Johnny Tri Nguyen), the group’s Vietnamese guide, who reminds the visiting Americans that wars never really end. For Ali, the objection cost him several productive years of his career and his heavyweight title; for Dr. King, this new focus was quite possibly the final straw that led to his assassination. for strong violence, grisly images and pervasive language. We also deal with how the armed forces, the National Guard were sent out to quell the uprising— I’m not going to use the word riot. There’s more. “Negroes are only 11% of the US populations, but among troops here in Vietnam, you are 32%.” I remember that day when Dr. King was assassinated. They will be assisted, at least to the base of their jungle journey, by Vinh (Johnny Tri Nguyen), a trustworthy guide who provides context from his side of what he calls “The American War.”. Otis reconnects with Tien (Le Y Lan), a former sex worker with whom he had a relationship during his tours of duty. His critique of Hollywood’s long history of ignoring and distorting black lives has altered the way we look at movies. ‘Da 5 Bloods’ Review: Black Lives Mattered in Vietnam, Too Spike Lee’s new joint is an anguished, funny, violent argument with and about American history, with an … Tien (Le Y Lan), Otis’s former lover, is part of the scheme, in association with an unsavory Frenchman in a white linen suit (Jean Reno). After kicking off with archival footage of a suffering world during the … Da 5 Bloods: Video Review More From Common Sense Media UP NEXT. I’m tempted to say that with “Da 5 Bloods,” which debuts on Netflix on Friday, Lee has done it again. He is a colossal, terrifying presence — an archetype in the mold of Natty Bumppo, Captain Ahab, Bigger Thomas and Rambo himself. Spike Lee narrates a sequence from his Netflix feature. “You’re gonna have to kill me.” But also knowing their brothers and sisters are fighting for their justice, and that’s what this film is about— how we, as descendants of slaves, have fought for this country from day one. Instead, though, it ends up becoming Lee’s Triple Frontier, another Netflix disappointment about veterans regrouping to get theirs, another waste of some great actors. There’s no question he wants Da 5 Bloods to be his Treasure of the Sierra Madre. It’s no mistake that “Da 5 Bloods” ends with Langston Hughes’ words: "Da 5 Bloods" will be available on Netflix on Friday, 6/12. Lee uses them to highlight another commonality: their strenuous opposition to the Vietnam War. One of them is also a big “Rambo” fan. This is the opposite of a shortcoming. First doses of … So, on the surface, we have the story of four Vietnam vets who have returned to the country that bonded them in battle to claim a treasure they buried several decades ago. When you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. The loot has also already been turned into more palatable and recognizable gold bars. They all live with pride and regret, scarred in large and small ways by the trauma they endured as young men. As expected, Lee gets excellent performances out of his cast straight down the line and is unafraid to coax out moments of love and affection to undercut the expected machismo of his Bloods. She was the voice of Radio Hanoi during the Vietnam War, and like Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose in World War II, their job was to play music that the American soldiers wanted to listen to. Running time: 2 hours 34 minutes. Spike Lee Netflix! Spike Lee, Clarke Peters, Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors and Norm Lewis in Da 5 Bloods (photo courtesy of David Lee/Netflix) There’s something circular … Newton Thomas Sigel’s cinematography is at times beautiful, sometimes putrid, as Lee plays with film textures and formats, but Adam Gough, fresh off of Roma (2018), seems to have had his work cut out for him in the editing department, with certain sections of Da 5 Bloods looking shoddy (particularly in some gun fight sequences). Da 5 Bloods is proof the Vietnam War genre is still ripe for fascinating stories, thanks to great performances and Lee being at the top of his craft. Jonathan Majors! Paul may be MAGA, and the red hat he wears in the jungle is an image ripe with shade (the hat went to Vietnam, its symbolic representation stayed home), but he is also the most complex character in “Da 5 Bloods,” a mix of rage, anger, and hurt exacerbated by the war and the guilt it seared into his soul. Alas, each intention doesn’t serve the other, and so both go unrealized. As he has demonstrated his mastery of established genres (the biopic, the musical, the cop movie, the combat picture, and so on), he has also reinvented them, pointing out blind spots and filling in gaps. It seems safe to say that America itself has never been an ideologically coherent proposition, and its greatest artists embrace havoc as a kind of birthright, producing not analyses of chaos but indelible embodiments of it. Each one of them confirmed this happened. In those flashbacks, all four older actors play themselves without benefit of the de-aging CGI that plagued “The Irishman.” At first, it’s rather jarring, but I bought into the visual of these characters stepping through the looking glass armed with the knowledge their younger incarnations did not have. They were asked to kill and die in a morally dubious undertaking in the service of a country that refused to treat them as full citizens. Découvrez les 16 critiques de journaux et des revues spécialisées pour le film Da 5 Bloods réalisé par Spike Lee avec Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis. So, there’s a nod to Walter Huston’s joyous gold discovery dance and Vietnamese bandits dare to paraphrase that line about not needing any stinkin’ badges. “Stand down! When they first meet up in Ho Chi Minh City, shaking hands and busting chops, the other guys give Paul grief for his red MAGA baseball cap. Beyond The Trailer reaction & movie review 2020! Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here. The truth of this observation is borne out in various ways, some of them bluntly literal. Da 5 Bloods est un film réalisé par Spike Lee avec Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors. In addition to the verbal commentary about present events vs. past ones, Lee also employs some sly visual representations of his points. Lee also works in ties between the French, who tried their hand at Vietnam, and the Americans, who, to quote Otis, “tried to feed us that anti-Commie Kool-Aid.” “Uncle Sam did no better in Vietnam than the French did,” Desroche tells Paul after the latter goes off on him regarding French weakness. Cinéma Par Remi Lou le 12 juin 2020 à 17h24. A little known story is that, when the bloods, the black soldiers in Vietnam heard that Dr. King had been assassinated, when they heard their brothers and sisters were burning down over 122 cities, they were very, you might say, hot. Da 5 Bloods Movie Review: The Last Word. For black soldiers like the five in the movie’s title, it was especially agonizing. So you can make the case that we’ve been more patriotic than anybody. This long, anguished, funny, violent excursion into a hidden chamber of the nation’s heart of darkness isn’t like anything else, even if it may put you in mind of a lot of other things. Paul was with Stormin’ Norman when he died, and it’s easy to figure out what happened long before the truth is revealed. Paul would rather do business with anyone else, but this is the hand they’re dealt, so the Bloods choose to play it. In the end, Da 5 Bloods feels like a clumsy hybrid of two fine impulses — to make a heist movie set in Vietnam, and to make a statement about race in 2020. Running in parallel with these criticisms are blatant homages to other films, and not just war movies like “Apocalypse Now,” which gets a visual name-check as the main characters do a pseudo-Soul Train line boogie to Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give it Up.” A big chunk of “Da 5 Bloods” pays tribute to John Huston’s masterful 1948 adaptation of B. Traven’s classic parable of greed, “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” Like that film, the plot involves a search for gold, though unlike Humphrey Bogart and John’s dad, Walter, the main characters here have a good idea where the treasure is. The only films which scored multiple awards were Da 5 Bloods and Never Rarely Sometimes Always.But the top prize went to First Cow (which is the only prize it won).This year featured the most female directors they've ever honored simultaneously with female-helmed films winning Best … But again, that’s the well-worn path Lee travels to get to the heretofore underrepresented onscreen depiction of Black postwar trauma and its effects on friends and family alike. “Da 5 Bloods” jumps back and forth, though not too many times, between the Bloods’ tours of duty and the present day. Thank god it didn’t. When we touch down in the present, we are in a Ho Chi Minh City hotel where the four surviving bloods — Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), Eddie (Norm Lewis), Otis (Clarke Peters) and Paul (Delroy Lindo) — have gathered for what looks like an old-timers’ reunion tour. (It’s a long list that encompasses John Turturro’s Pino in “Do the Right Thing” and the snarling white supremacist played by Paakkonen in “BlacKkKlansman.”) And Lee doesn’t treat Paul as a misguided reactionary. As the women in this outfit, Lan and Thierry acquit themselves nicely with a toughness tempered with warmth. “Be safe.” There almost was a civil war in Vietnam, where black soldiers were getting ready to take up arms, and they would not be shooting at the Viet Cong. Blanchard’s score is bombastic, terrifying and militaristic one minute, achingly beautiful the next. In a perfect casting move, Stormin’ Norman is played by Black Panther himself, Chadwick Boseman. My name is Spike Lee, and I’m the director of “Da 5 Bloods.” “This is the voice of Vietnam.” That character you see is Hanoi Hannah, and that’s a real life character.