Da 5 Bloods (2020)

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1. 

   Earring72

   Delroy Lindo is TERRIFIC.....unfortunately this movie ain't. Bad story thats all over the place makes for a frustrating 2.5 hours. Delroy deserves an award though!!!! 4 years ago
2. 

   Siskoid

   Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods is certainly about THIS moment in time, but he plays a lot of tricks with form that also tells us THIS moment? It's been going on for decades. As four friends go back to Vietnam to find a lost comrade's remains and (uh oh) the government gold they buried in the jungle, Lee fiddles with the aspect ratio, uses the actors as they are in flashbacks (though I do question people who were in Vietnam 50 years before looking this young in the present), and drops in pictures and footage as if this were a documentary. It can be distracting, but works as a manifestation of memory and of course PTSD. I'm most critical of his use of gory file footage and photography to ambush the viewer in what is, despite the added layers of meaning, a heist movie in the style of Three Kings or Kelly's Heroes (with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre thrown in). Especially in the case of the Vietnamese, a people the film paints as brutalized just as African-Americans are, I don't think those images "belong" to the film maker, and just brutalize more. When he talks about the black experience in Vietnam, Lee is on surer footing. I like the specificity that seems denied white-led Vietnam films (and Lee quotes a lot from them, Apocalypse Now chief among them), and a number of subplots find their roots in that specificity. As for the caper, it can be fun, but it's also quite frustrating because one of the guys is his own worst enemy. There's always an asshole in these kinds of things, I guess, and in this case he's the (unlikely) Trump voter. Not coincidentally, because he embraces, greed, selfishness, paranoia and hate, he's going to be the one to derail everything. More than a political cheap shot, this is part of a moral fable about the greater good, and only Delroy Lindo's considerable talent keeps the character from being totally unsympathetic. He's suffering, and he gets a moment of grace at the end, but he's pretty unforgivable. Well, I guess that's up to you. 4 years 3 months ago
3. 

   baraka92

   quote:

   "This movie is good but it needs more Marvin Gaye."

   Spike Lee while watching The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
   
   Despite being an angry movie, this might be Spike's most uplifting joint. Give all the awards to Delroy Lindo. 4 years 3 months ago

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