Four stars. Rated R, for strong violence, grisly images and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.26.20
Movie serendipity can be spooky at times.
Back in the spring of 1979, The China Syndrome hit theaters just 12 days prior to Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island almost-a-catastrophe.
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| Sheer chance has brought them to the right spot: As David (Jonathan Majors, far right) watches quietly, his companions — from left, Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), Eddie (Norm Lewis), Paul (Delroy Lindo) and Otis (Clarke Peters) — find evidence of their long-ago fallen comrade. |
And now, director Spike Lee’s savagely compelling new drama, Da 5 Bloods, debuted on Netflix June 12, not quite three weeks after the callous murder of George Floyd ignited a justifiably enraged movement that shows no sign of slowing. Lee’s message couldn’t be more timely.
His film warrants such enhanced attention. And then some.
Da 5 Bloods — co-scripted by Lee, Danny Bilson, Paul De Meo and Kevin Willmott — finds the reliably passionate filmmaker once again in the infuriated mode that characterized his early career. This isn’t a slyly sarcastic (and fact-based) jab at racist buffoons akin to 2018’s BlacKkKlansman; Da 5 Bloods is a bleak, intensely angry rage-against-the-man diatribe, with a slice of magic realism.
And, yes, a few winks and nods to classic Hollywood. Let’s call it a Vietnam parable by way of 1948’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
The setting and character dynamics may be different, but the message is identical: Greed destroys.
African-American Vietnam veterans Paul (Delroy Lindo), Otis (Clarke Peters), Eddie (Norm Lewis) and Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) haven’t been too successful, since returning to the world. They’re broken men, beaten down by grief, illness, addiction, financial ruin and divorce. And by regret and shame, knowing that — decades earlier — they were forced to abandon their fallen squad leader, known as Stormin’ Norman.
Haunted ever since by this failure (“Leave no man behind!”), they’ve returned to Vietnam, determined to find, and bring home, their former comrade’s remains.
As it happens, though, their motives aren’t entirely pure. Back in the day — shortly before Norman’s death — the squad was tasked by the CIA to deliver a chest of gold bars to the indigenous Vietnamese who were helping the American war effort. But Norman — passionate about his own people, back home — proposed they bury the gold until they could later reclaim it for the benefit of their own communities.
These details emerge via flashbacks that periodically interrupt the present-day action, often as a result of one man’s anguished memories. Lee and cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel quite cleverly distinguish the two time periods: The 1970s flashbacks are characterized by the 4x3 aspect ratio then common on TV sets, whereas present-day events are cinematic wide-screen.
Another fascinating touch: Lee doesn’t bother using different actors to play the younger selves of Paul, Otis, Eddie and Melvin, instead utilizing the same quartet. This is quite clever, since — even when thinking back decades — they’re more likely to picture themselves as “living memories” in the here and now.
The one exception is Stormin’ Norman (Chadwick Boseman), who — of course — never had the opportunity to get older.
As the flashbacks reveal, he’s far more than a mere squad leader. Boseman makes him teacher, preacher and prophet: a sage who not only protects his four fellow Bloods, but also educates them in the ways of cultural pride, while also highlighting the racial imbalance that finds black soldiers far more likely to be sent on dangerous missions.
Lee punctuates Norman’s poetic lectures with cutaway stills (Crispus Attucks, the first American killed during the emerging American Revolution) and brief video clips (Muhammad Ali’s memorable quote, upon refusing military induction). Such interludes certainly are informative — at times, even fascinating — but they do tend to yank us out of the moment.
And, no question, by the third act Lee becomes quite didactic. (Mind you, not without cause.)
Returning to the core plot…
The plan, once the gold has been recovered, is to liaise with international exports “fixer” Desroche (Jean Reno), who can turn the bullion into currency then deposited in offshore accounts. Desroche has been recommended by Tiên Luu (Lê Y Lan), Otis’ long-unseen former lover.
The evening before leaving for the jungle, the veterans encounter a volunteer mine-detection team comprising Hedy (Mélanie Thierry), Simon (Paul Walter Hauser) and Seppo (Jasper Pääkkönen). They’ll be seen again.
By this point, the quartet has become a quintet; they’ve unexpectedly been joined by Paul’s son, David (Jonathan Majors), greatly worried about the father who has long shunned him. Their estrangement is personal and political; Paul is a defiant supporter of President Trump — complete with red MAGA cap — a position that is anathema to David, a millennial African-American studies teacher.
The following day, a local guide (Johnny Trí Nguyen, as Vinh) accompanies the men on a tense boat ride to the edge of the jungle, and then awaits their return. The rising tension between Paul and David notwithstanding, there’s a sense that all concern regard this as their final shot at a “boys’ own adventure” romp.
How wrong they are, as we quickly slam into Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness territory.
Lindo plays Paul as the ultimate tragic figure: a PTSD-shattered individual emblematic of blue-collar Americans who’ve directed their bitterness at the wrong people. But this disconnect contributes to Paul’s volatility, because — deep down — he knows that it conflicts with the wisdom imparted by Norman, so long ago. Lindo doesn’t merely speak his lines; he declaims in twisted Shakespearean fashion, turning Paul into a modern-day King Lear.
Much of what follows will result from what Paul says and does.
Melvin is the grounded yin to Paul’s unstable yang. Whitlock makes him cheerful, perhaps to the point of flippancy; despite a stable home life with a wife and 18-year-old son, Melvin tends to live for the moment … but only initially. As events proceed, Whitlock grants Melvin a clearer sense of right and wrong.
Peters’ Otis, godfather to David, is the group’s former medic: a calling that he has maintained Stateside, with a near-fanatical devotion toward healing people. He’s wise, patient and compassionate, and — Peters ensures this — dignified, even in these harsh surroundings. Otis also is the one person usually able to control Paul, by appealing to what remains of his better nature: “Stick with your tribe”
At first blush, Lewis’ Eddie is an outlier: a wildly successful entrepreneur with his name affixed to car dealerships across the United States, who throws money around with the élan of a New England aristocrat. But it seems a pose; Lewis adds a note of desperation to his altruism, and the occasional shrill note in his voice sounds more like pleading than persuasion.
Reno oozes mendacity as Desroche, somebody we instinctively distrust; Lan, in contrast, grants the contemplative Tiên pragmatism and quiet nobility. Despite having grown up in the aftermath of what Americans did to his country, Tiên bears these Americans no ill will.
Lee and his writers take their time establishing setting, characters, motivations and the ghosts nibbling at their souls; halfway along in this 154-minutes drama, we’re definitely engrossed, trailing a few footsteps behind these men. By which point, savvy viewers may fear that things have remained too calm.
Shrewd call. When the merde hits the fan — quite abruptly — things turn viciously, appallingly nasty.
The drama is shaded and amplified by a deeply moving score from Terence Blanchard, a longtime Lee colleague who frequently channels Aaron Copland’s rousing compositions. (Lee’s fondness for Copland is well known; 1998’s He Got Game was scored entirely with Copland compositions, most notably — and appropriately — “John Henry.”) The sweeping grandeur of some of Blanchard’s themes are balanced by quieter, more intense cues that burrow into the soul.
It could be argued, as we approach the story’s epilog, that Lee’s own voice supplants those of his otherwise carefully crafted characters; he succumbs to laying it on with a trowel, and we viewers can’t help feeling pummeled. But — given current events — even this feels justified.
But be advised: The superb acting and compelling storytelling notwithstanding, this is grim stuff, and not recommended for sensitive souls.
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