DA 5 BLOODS

Genre: Action

Rating: R

Running Time: 154 mins.

Where Can You See It?: Netflix

Premise: Four Vietnam vets (Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Norm Peters) return to the country to recover the remains of their respected captain Stormin’ Norman (Chadwick Boseman), along with the treasure of gold bars they buried long ago. Their past catches up with their present when an armed local militia sets its sights on the gold.

Behind-the-Scenes: Spike Lee shopped the film to multiple studios, all of which rejected, before Netflix picked up the $50 million tab. The script was originally written for four white actors. Lee and his co-writer, Kevin Willmott, flipped it. The names of each of the main characters (Paul, Melvin, Otis, Eddie and David) are the same names as the five members of the musical group, The Temptations. Lindo, Whitlock, and Peters have all worked with Lee before.

The Good: Da 5 Bloods is a singular film, one that covers several genres over its 2.5 hour runtime with turn-on-a-dime tonal shifts. It can get weird and a little clumsy. Some of its symbolism is anything but subtle, and its use of the medium is wholly theatrical featuring direct monologues to the camera, cutaways to photographs of historical figures when referenced on screen, and alternating aspect ratios that signal flashbacks. But throughout it all, the movie is 100% a Spike Lee Joint. And it’s a pretty remarkable one too. Lee directs the heck out of it – the action scenes are exciting, with grace notes of humor, some well-crafted tension, and a ton of loving homages to flicks like Apocalypse Now and Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The cast is great across the board, but it’s Delroy Lindo who stands out the most and makes a strong case for an Oscar nomination. Lindo has been good in so much for so long that it’s easy to take him for granted. His performance here makes that all but impossible to do now.

The Bad: Like other Lee movies, his passion sometimes overwhelms the proceedings. He’s having such a good time stirring the pot and thinking outside the box that some script basics, like character consistencies or established motivations, are thrown out the window in favor of whatever point Lee wants to make in a given scene. All of the actors play themselves in the Vietnam flashback scenes, which may have a thematic purpose but still took me out of the movie and proved distracting.

Should You See It?: Yes. Da 5 Bloods is the (very) early front runner for Best Picture in this weird movie year, and one of the best original Netflix films made to date.

Star Rating: **** out of 5 stars

Better Than: The Irishman

Worse Than: BlackKklansman

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