In the 1930s Warner Brothers became notorious for a
series of socially relevant crime movies like The Public Enemy (1931), Dead
End (1937) or The Roaring Twenties (1939). Looking back almost a century
on, with a gaze devoid of context, we see them now as rattling good thrillers
which made stars of the likes of James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart.
What we do not often realise is how controversial
these films were at the time. They were often billed as being ‘ripped from today’s
headlines’ and their stories of street kids, bootleggers, and glamorous gangsters
were seen as being reflective of - and a threat to - the social order of
Depression-era America.
The same might be said about Spike Lee’s remarkable
new film Da 5 Bloods (2020) which is similarly, but much more sadly,
relevant to the times in which it is set. Lee is possibly the most political
film maker in the industry, and it would be unthinkable for him not to make
comment on the Black Lives Matter movement. His last film BlacKkKlansman
(2018) was an eloquent condemnation of race and racism in America, especially in
its shocking finale, but Da 5 Bloods, for me, goes further.
It’s not just that the film drops on Netflix only days
after the death of George Floyd and the global eruption of protest that followed his killing, its
more what Lee’s film has to say about the sad continuum in which this death
finds itself.
Da 5 Bloods is set in the present day with
four African American former G.I.s returning to Vietnam for the first time
since their last tour of duty. Paul (Delroy Lindo), Otis (Clarke Peters), Eddie
(Norm Lewis) and Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr) have come on a sentimental journey.
They want to locate the grave of their former squad leader Norman (Chadwick Boseman)
and repatriate his remains.
Despite the backslapping, fist-pumping camaraderie
and bonhomie it is quickly obvious that they were not the men they once were.
Paul has become a Trump-boosting MAGA supporter, Otis has an opioid addiction
and a secret Vietnamese daughter, while Eddie and Melvin are also much changed.
The spontaneous arrival of Paul’s son David (Jonathan Majors) hints at a
greater concern.
The reasons for the trip are not purely sentimental.
They also want to recover a load of gold bullion that was ‘lost’ on their
watch. The hunt for the treasure very quickly turns this into a very effective
updating of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) as they try to get
the gold out of the country while being pursued by their double-crossing backers.
It is just possible – but only just if you had been
living in a cave – to see Da 5 Bloods as a conventional action movie. A
sort of rollicking Over the Hill gang type of story where – unlike The Irishman
(2019) – there is no digital jiggery pokery to de-age the stars. They appear as
their 21st century selves in the flashback sequences, possibly because
in their minds they are still the same vital, virile young men who went in
country.
Spike Lee however is not about to let the audience
off the hook so easily. Although he has some fun with aspect ratios that rather
makes you want to see this on a big screen, the gadfly in Lee constantly provokes
and discomfits. Just as he did in BlacKkKlansman, real life intrudes frequently
into the narrative as Lee provides an uncomfortable civics lesson.
This, to my knowledge, is the first serious
depiction of the African American perspective on Vietnam. It was touched on in Dead
Presidents (1995) by the Hughes brothers, but that was more about the aftermath
of the conflict. Lee’s view here is that there is no aftermath. The film is
summed up by the Bloods Vietnamese guide (Johnny Nguyen) who says: ‘After you’ve
been in a war you understand it never really ends’.
For Spike Lee and the characters in this film
there is the sense that Vietnam was a skirmish in a wider war that African
Americans have been fighting for more than 200 years and which shows little
sign of ending. Delroy Lindo’s performance as a man trying to come to terms with
who he was and what he has become is a career-best for a very fine actor, however
it is also the dilemma of his generation in microcosm.
The film is far from perfect; it is overlong and
in places the story wanders like the Mekong River. But it has raw power and
emotion – nowhere more so than in the final twenty minutes – that makes it linger
in the memory.
It also confirms that Spike Lee, one of the world’s
great filmmakers, is back on top of his game making films that could be ripped
from today’s headlines.
