The latest film by Spike Lee is a Vietnam War tale of black American soldiers catching up their wartime past and their hunt to re-discover a treasure trove they hid during the war. The film co-incidental timing of the release when ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests are stirring the hearts of millions of people, adds extra fuel to Lee’s Netflix original ‘Da 5 Bloods’. Major of Lee’s career as a director consists of several films that make a striking blow on racism prominent in American society, including Black Klansman and 25th Hour. With theaters shut down due to the pandemic, the digital launch of ‘Da 5 Blood’ seems to be the right film released at the right place at the right time.
Beautifully woven 4:3 wartime timeline intelligently switches back and forth to the present day in widescreen. Five Vietnam War veterans-turned-buddies, Norman (Chadwick Boseman), Paul (Delroy Lindo), Otis (Clarke Peters), Eddie (Norm Lewis), and Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), call themselves the Da Bloods and hustle against the Vietnamese in America’s quest of global capitalist paramountcy. The news of Martin Luther King’s assassination leaves them aghast on foreign soil, forcing them to reconsider their absolute allegiance for a country that the blacks inferior because of their color.
Fifty years, the Da Bloods reunite, without Norman, who died in the war, to recover remains of Norman and a chest of buried gold, from Vietnam. In their quest of gold, all of them battle PTSD, but only Paul still sees and talks with Norman, in his mind. The screen-shifting parallels are perfectly placed, emanating metaphors between American politics and the members of Da Blood. The quest for gold is metaphoric to America’s quest of controlling Vietnam. Their talk of movies like Rambo being propagandist syncs with their conspiracy of selling off the gold in the black market. They are ready to spill any amount of blood necessary for the gold, just like the cold-war American politicians who cold-heartedly massacred millions of their own in the Vietnam War.
Da 5 Bloods takes you on a journey back in time and teaches how it affects the present. A must watch from our side.