Da 5 Bloods is both Spike Lee’s newest film and a Netflix film and concerns the story of 4 Black Vietnam Veterans (Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Isiah Whitlock Jr and Norm Lewis) who return to the Nam to recover the remains of their commanding officer (Chadwick Boseman) who was killed during the War but there is a lost treasure of Gold to be found also but some scars of Vietnam never truly heal.
Da 5 Bloods is one of the better Spike Lee films I thought and firstly I have to talk about the great central performance by Mr Lindo who also appeared in Spike’s 1994 film Crooklyn which also starred Alfre Woodard and he is really good in this film as the grizzled old veteran who went home but never really truly recovered from the experience of the war much like many other veterans from that conflict and his chemistry with Mr Peters, Mr Whitlock Jr and Mr Lewis is great and I loved watching all 4 of these men sit around and talk as if the bond had never left.
The film also has some gorgeous cinematography courtesy of Tom Sigel which really shows off both the landscape of Vietnam (watching this film made me think of my co worker Deb who went there some years ago and told some great stories about the region and the history of the war left behind) as well as the use of the shifting aspect ratios which works very well and one nice thing about the film is that it uses film for the flashback scenes while the present day scenes are shot digitally.
But sadly the film began to lose me around the 2 hour mark and it went on a little too long for me as I felt that the story had reached a rather nice and natural end but instead we got what felt like a side adventure with the Flying Hellfish from the Simpsons and while watching this movie that episode did come to mind a fair few times and after a while I just wanted the film to end and everyone to go home after their journey.
And so that was Da 5 Bloods and for the most part I really like the film despite my issues with its running time, 3 and a half out of 5.
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