Netflix Review - Da 5 Bloods (18)

We fought an immoral war that wasn't ours for rights we didn't have.

The Gist: Four African American veterans of the Vietnam War return to that country half a century after having left both it and the body of their fallen squad leader - 'Stormin' Norman' - behind. Their purpose for going back 'in country' is to retrieve Norman's remains along with the hoard of gold bars they left buried close to his body - originally intended as payment to South Vietnamese allies. The scars of war run deep, never more so than in the mind of Paul (Delroy Lindo), whose PTSD-fuelled paranoid threatens the whole expedition. And how far they can trust the businessman who has agreed to help them smuggle the gold out of the country is a whole other cause for concern. For these men the war turns out to be far from over...

The Juice: Da 5 Bloods is a whole lot of movie, created on a scale that makes you long to watch it on a big screen. As director Spike Lee's follow-up to BlacKkKlansman it's an epic of African American history and no less confrontational than its 2018 predecessor, while also providing a tense, thrilling and viscerally bloody jungle adventure. The gold fever that threatens to undermine these Bloods' better intentions is reminiscent of Bogart classic The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and the thriller elements are nerve-jangling, but this story always comes back to a bigger picture - of men whose lives should have mattered more to their country, whether in Vietnam or back home. It tackles the unspeakable horrors of the historic war too, confronting its audience with the most emotionally jarring news footage of the era and refusing to flinch from the imagery, however much we're inclined to do so.

In terms of its craft this is as ambitious and experimental a film as Lee has ever made. The widescreen shots of modern Ho Chi Minh City - gorgeous and colour-saturated - shrink to a boxy aspect ratio for flashback sequences involving the original '5'. The ageing actors all play themselves in pulsing action sequences from late '60s Vietnam, Black Panther's Chadwick Boseman the only youthful face among them as Stormin' Norman; no Irishman-style de-aging here, but this narrative decision makes the moments seem dreamlike, the surviving comrades recalling a spiritually-inclined warrior more in tune with his history than any of them.

The Bloods themselves convey intense camaraderie from their airport reunion and continue to sell the bond and break of these war-torn individuals, as they revisit horrors they've never truly left behind. Clarke Peters's Otis is the voice of empathy and reason throughout (Peters will always be The Wire's Lester Freamon to me) and Isiah Whitlock Jr brings an enjoyably earthy humour to Melvin, but it's Lindo who has the meatiest role as damaged Paul. Sympathetic, repellent and heartbreaking on repeat, he's a powerful study in the worst that war can do to a man. If there's a beatific glow surrounding Norman as remembered by his friends, Paul is the portrait of a man in his own private Hell. 

The Judgement: 8/10. Da 5 Bloods is a more sprawling affair than the tightly focused BlacKkKlansman, like a deli sandwich with so many ingredients that the bread can scarcely hold them all together. It also signposts one or two of its most explosive moments more than it should. That said, this reenvisioning of the 'Nam movie is full of bona fide Lee brilliance, its challenging aspects born as much of recent times as of the War itself. While the director has much to say about the conflict's repercussions (both for GIs and for Vietnam itself), it also places the Bloods' grim adventures in the broader flow of black American experience from the Civil Rights movement right up to now. It's not Lee at his absolute best, but with butt-clenching action adventure and searing political relevance, it comes pretty damn close.