Spike Lee’s ‘Da 5 Bloods’ on Netflix: Film Review
Spike Lee explores the twin traumas of the war in Vietnam and racial injustice at home in an ambitious but uneven adventure movie committed to expanding history.
https://variety.com/2020/film/reviews/da-5-bloods-review-spike-lee-chadwick-boseman-1234629971/#article-comments5 reasons you must watch Spike Lee’s ‘Da 5 Bloods’
Spend your weekend watching the latest feature from the legendary director starring Chadwick Boseman.
...this captivating heist flick has so many powerful elements, it doesn’t easily fit into one particular genre. Instead, it’s a concoction of comedy, drama, suspense, and action sprinkled with documentary-style snapshots and historical footage that work together beautifully...
This film is just too good to spoil so here are 5 reasons Da 5 Bloods is not to be missed:
The performances are incredible....It’s a history lesson.... It’s a kick-ass heist flick....It goes deep....It couldn’t be more timely....
Reconciling the subjects this film examines with the reality playing out in real life is an experience in itself and it’s impossible not to reflect on the endless loop our history is running on. It’s a perfect portrait of where we have been and where we still are.https://thegrio.com/2020/06/12/spike-lee-da-5-bloods/
The Long, Strange Journey of Da 5 Bloods
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/06/da-5-bloods-interview-spike-lee-kevin-willmott-danny-bilson-paul-de-meo/613153/
- Willmott: I think a large part of it is that we all share in the same
motivation. Spike was the person that took it and turned it into an amazing
film, but we all felt the same way about veterans as a whole, and specifically
black veterans being treated as second-class citizens when they returned. All
veterans got a bad shake, but they got a worse shake.
- Lee: War is like Marvin Gaye sang in the
song. War is hell. Another thing in the film that’s very unique is that we
were not going to demonize or dehumanize the Vietcong, or the Vietnamese people
as a whole. We weren’t going to do that.
- Sims: In a lot of Vietnam War movies, they are just faceless villains
with very little characterization.
- Willmott: Yes. We tried hard to put a human face on the Vietnamese, not just on the characters but on their point of view. One of the things that I really loved, that Spike was always very focused on, was how everyone in the film is from an oppressed group. Everyone is coming out of colonialism and slavery; they have more in common than they really have apart. So we always were trying to find those connections....
- Willmott: You know, one of the things that was so unique about that camaraderie and brotherhood that Bloods had back in the day—they were all about serving others and helping the community.
Lee: We're addressing stuff that did not just show up overnight.
Willmott: … Norman is kind of an example of black consciousness, being a teacher of black history. And Spike made a great connection between the gold and that consciousness. They're asking for reparations; they see this gold as for the people back home. - By Viet Thanh Nguyen
Vietnamese Lives, American Imperialist Views, Even in ‘Da 5 Bloods’
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/movies/da-5-bloods-vietnam.html?smid=tw-share
- ‘Da 5 Bloods’ and the Strange Ghosts of Imperialism, the Vietnam War, and ‘Apocalypse Now’
- by Hoai-Tran Bui
- Da 5 Bloods is a ghost story. It’s about the ghosts that exist in the minds of Vietnam War veterans — played here with stunning ferocity and pain by Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis, and Isiah Whitlock Jr. — haunted by the deeds they committed fighting a war that was not theirs. It’s about the ghosts of racism and imperialism that continue to thrive in contemporary society. But the most terrifying ghost in Da 5 Bloods is the ghost of the Vietnam War itself, which continues to haunt the American conscience to this day. In American minds, and in the Hollywood movies through which they process their guilt, the Vietnam War still stands as the great American failure — the war that represented the downfall of the U.S. as the shining beacon of democracy.But with Da 5 Bloods, Spike Lee repurposes the typical Vietnam War movie narrative, which has long been an ode to the last gasps of traditional American masculinity, to instead examine Black trauma and reckon with the devastating consequences that American violence has wrought upon the world and its own citizens. Lee interweaves the familiar war narrative and iconography with the modern-day context of Black Lives Matter and America’s inherited racism (given form by Donald Trump’s “MAGA” movement), which in turn act in concert with the lingering effects of French imperialism in Vietnam. The oppression that Black people suffered at the hands of their own government, Lee suggests, is analogous to the oppression that the Vietnamese people suffered at the hands of American soldiers. The war is always being waged, Da 5 Bloods implies, whether it’s a war against white supremacy or a war against racism.
From the perspective of a Vietnamese critic: Cám Ơn, Spike Lee, for laying to rest cinema’s favorite war with ‘Da 5 Bloods’
- Since I’ve been watching films, casually and critically, I’ve been waiting for a film to end the trope “Vietnam means War.” In passing and in depth; in grounded and fictional settings; as a character’s building block or their definer; if not subplot then plot. Through constant reinforcement, cinema ensures the “No” answer to the following questions:Can my birth country be more than ravaged jungles and settlements?Can the people be more than just victims — and for lives tied to Vietnamese, more than just fighters?Can the Vietnamese focus on matters beyond their own?My wait ended with Da 5 Bloods, the Spike Lee and Netflix production that said “Yes” to the all of the above. It did the damn thing by doing the right thing!
- Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods: How Bad is It?
- by Jerry Lembcke
- “Awful” is not the most thoughtful way to begin a film review. But why mince words? ...
- Bloods trots out every caricature of Viet Nam War figures that you can imagine, beginning with American veterans of the war. The image of traumatized veterans was a Hollywood staple even before PTSD was canonized in the 1980 DSM. The utility of the victim-veteran as a metaphor for the America victimized by the war made it political and filmic catnip from Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” years to Donald Trump’s campaign to “Make America Great Again.” ...
- This awful movie is also dangerous. With one blood wearing a MAGA hat, the loss of the war is attributed to home-front betrayal—upon return, we were called “baby killers,” says one of the four. Republicans have been on a half-century campaign to avenge the treachery of the anti-war left, as they see it, and now is not the time to give credence to Trumpian revanchism as a promising course for Black Americans—or anyone.
- http://hnn.us/article/176072
