But “Da 5 Bloods” is smarter than its Indiana Jones-style set-pieces. Once that happens, even a handful of fully committed performances - most notably from de facto squad leader Delroy Lindo and Chadwick Boseman as the fallen hero they all look up to - can’t keep it from becoming the kind of generic pyrotechnic action fodder Hollywood churned out back in the ’90s, complete with booby traps and stock double crosses. Directors repeatedly prove to be their own worst enemies when given carte blanche, and Lee occasionally self-sabotages here: The 155-minute film opens strong, addressing the past and present trauma of Black GIs, before devolving into a series of formulaic standoffs in the back half. The company is committed to enabling auteurs to make their passion projects, granting them greater freedom and resources than the traditional studios do. For better or worse, the project has a distinctive Netflix feel to it as well: a shaggy structure, an unwieldy run time and small-screen-quality visual effects. In this case, Lee has Netflix behind him, which offers the widest possible exposure for the straight-to-streaming release at a time when movie theaters are just barely beginning to reopen. And now, “Da 5 Bloods” - which the Cannes Film Festival reportedly intended to screen out of competition - marks another bold salvo from an artist committed to delivering political statements through popular entertainment. “Will History Stop Repeating Itself?” the short film implores. He reminded us of that a week ago with his new “3 Brothers” video, which identifies the horrifying pattern connecting the murder of Radio Raheem in 1989’s “Do the Right Thing” to the more recent choking deaths of Floyd and Eric Garner. That is true, but let’s be clear: Lee has always been ahead-of-his-timely. The result is overlong and erratic, but also frequently surprising for a contemporary riff on the classic greed-doesn’t-pay parable “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.”Įntertainment journalists have taken to describing “Da 5 Bloods” as “timely” because its release coincides with the nationwide protests that spontaneously arose following the murder of George Floyd. With one foot in the past and the other striding in sync with the Black Lives Matter movement, Lee interweaves potent social critique with escapist B-movie thrills as four veterans return to ’Nam to claim the loot they were ordered to retrieve decades earlier, but stashed for themselves instead. Through the Trojan horse of a treasure-hunt adventure movie, the director explores the mindset of Black soldiers who fought for their country at a time when African Americans were being oppressed at home. With “ Da 5 Bloods,” Spike Lee follows his long overdue Oscar win for “BlacKkKlansman” by revealing a side of the Vietnam story that’s seldom told.
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