SummaryFour African-American Vets — Paul (Delroy Lindo), Otis (Clarke Peters), Eddie (Norm Lewis), and Melvin (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) — return to Vietnam. Searching for the remains of their fallen Squad Leader (Chadwick Boseman) and the promise of buried treasure, our heroes, joined by Paul's concerned son (Jonathan Majors), battle forces of Man ...
SummaryFour African-American Vets — Paul (Delroy Lindo), Otis (Clarke Peters), Eddie (Norm Lewis), and Melvin (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) — return to Vietnam. Searching for the remains of their fallen Squad Leader (Chadwick Boseman) and the promise of buried treasure, our heroes, joined by Paul's concerned son (Jonathan Majors), battle forces of Man ...
The teeming profusion of events that Lee dramatizes is inseparable from the historiography that he foregrounds throughout. Both are brought to life with an intricately varied texture of dialogue and gesture, purpose and spirit—a crucial aspect of Lee’s career-long artistry that, here, reaches new heights, thanks to an extraordinary cast of actors who blend fervor and nuance, and whom Lee directs with manifest inspiration.
Lee has crafted an exciting, violent film that can be enjoyed as strictly that, but what elevates it to greatness is what it says and what it shows about the perception of Blackness, whether in heroic situations or human ones.
Fantastic film. Delroy Lindo deserves all the accolades he has received for his outstanding performance. Spike Lee, as usual, provides amazing cinematography and artistic camera angles.
If any of the political commentary lowers your rating on this movie, you’re missing the whole point.
The teeming profusion of events that Lee dramatizes is inseparable from the historiography that he foregrounds throughout. Both are brought to life with an intricately varied texture of dialogue and gesture, purpose and spirit—a crucial aspect of Lee’s career-long artistry that, here, reaches new heights, thanks to an extraordinary cast of actors who blend fervor and nuance, and whom Lee directs with manifest inspiratio
In its anger, its humor and its exuberance — in the emotional richness of the central performances and of Terence Blanchard’s score — this is unmistakably a Spike Lee Joint. It’s also an argument with and through the history of film.
The in-country trek at the heart of the film is pretty routine by Lee’s standards; it’s the way he tells that story, the asides and the history lessons and the cutaways and the tricks that have become the director’s singular cinematic vocabulary, that make it a must-see in these stormy times.
It's another timely, thought-provoking message from a filmmaker known for them, in a movie that piles so much on its plate as to fall short of Lee's best.
In the end, Da 5 Bloods feels like a clumsy hybrid of two fine impulses — to make a heist movie set in Vietnam, and to make a statement about race in 2020. Alas, each intention doesn’t serve the other, and so both go unrealized.
A 2020 Masterpiece of Cinema, Lee Doesn't Disappoint
12/12
This is the second film on my MLK Day antiracism watchlist. Like I mentioned, Freedom Writers was an outer circle antiracism film since it has a white savior storyline, but this film falls into the inner circle of antiracism, especially since it is a Black starring, Black-written, Black-produced, and Black-directed film that is made for black people and about black people.
Many antiracist films can fall flat when they are clearly written for white people to educate them on racism. Da 5 Bloods does not do that. It tackles the idea of race in many different ways, whether it's the treatment of Black people in the 70's and during Vietnam, between Black people and Vietnamese people, about what it means to be Black and celebrate it, and how it can tie history into the present. Lee has a masterful way of educating us on history. This film focuses on the Vietnam War but also greatly mentions MLK, Crispus Attucks, Angela Davis, Marvin ****, Black Lives Matter, and so on.
But anyway, this movie is a masterpiece of cinema, as I would expect from Spike Lee. It's a Spike Lee Joint 100% with all of his trademarks and psychological makeup of dealing with themes of race, manhood, and trauma. His style is bizarre and creative and breaks the rules of film and challenges viewers to look at things a different way.
Lastly, this was Chadwick Boseman's last film in his lifetime and second-to-last that he starred in. Having died soon after the release and having the movie revolve around the memory of his dead, admirable character, is double depression and absolutely heart wrenching to watch. Rest in Power Boseman.
It was ok, but I think it was a bit overhyped given it's message and events ongoing last year. While I liked it, to me it didn't have too much memorable moments in it or something to make it more interesting for me. Maybe of course not fully to my taste I dunno. Decent watch
Social and political commentary are certainly no strangers to a Spike Lee joint and Da 5 Bloods is no different. Arriving on the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter campaign, the release of the film couldn’t have been more pertinent given the story’s central theme. On this occasion, Lee takes us to back to Vietnam where he’s able to explore the inequality of African-American soldiers who were under the impression that the very freedoms they were fighting for didn’t actually apply to them when they returned home to the U.S. Lee adopts a back-and-forth chronology of the experiences of his characters during the war and the present day and intersperses it with historical facts that support his argument. It’s a clever technique and the film starts brightly as a result. However, the narrative eventually becomes muddled as he opts for a gold fever riff of John Huston’s The Treasure Of Sierra Madre (complete with an unashamed nod to that film most famous line). Around this point, the film begins to feel sluggish and overlong and fails to maintain its earlier momentum. It’s a respectable attempt at something different but ultimately it’s not one of Spike’s more refined works.
Poor production, dialogue and direction, lack of respect of basic physics laws like a backpack full of gold bars, a single one has more than 12kg! But this is just a detail, the movie is extremely boring, I tried to watch in 3 steps and quit, I always watch a movie till the end even Sharknado I resisted till the end! But 5 blood is really bad, this forced content about race with those terrible scenes seems like a homework movie made by students some school. That's really an unnecessary movie!
I really think that people that have 10 for this movie are black or evolved about some black cause... But the question is you cannot give a score based on race or the colour of skin, that's is racist, spike made some good movies, some excellent movie but this one is pathetic! You shouldn't rate a movie for race we should give a score based in the movie quality. For many people that was a complete waste of time, and lot of people could even get till the end of this movie, I started this considering the rating that is pretty overestimated and impartial! Be serious pls