In short: Da 5 Bloods (2020)

It’s not difficult to believe that films like this are a bit of a defence mechanism by Netflix against the type of critics that seems more interested in watching movies exclusively in the overpriced hell-holes known as cinemas, proving that they do indeed care for film as an art (not something the same critics usually ask of older multi-national companies).

It’s obviously all good when this gets someone like Spike Lee the money and the space to make the kind of film he wants to make without having to beg for favours from studios. Da 5 Bloods concerns a handful of black Vietnam veterans (Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis, Isiah Whitlock Jr.) returning to he country decades later to find the body of the squad leader they loved (Chadwick Boseman) as well as a bunch of gold, and ending up in a pretty bad shape for it.

It’s a pretty great film to me, splitting the difference between a leisurely on-foot kind of road movie and a jungle action film in a way only a director with decades of experience like Lee would dare, and on the way talking about the complicated relationships between these characters, black Americans and their country, black Americans and the Vietnamese and black Americans and war in an appropriately complicated manner that usually doesn’t go for the quick, easy answer while always keeping its eye on injustice and what comes from it. Also making an appearance are the bizarre thing about the French Americans of all political colour seem to have, ironic versions of war movie greatest hits (including a brilliantly funny moment with Wagner’s “Ritt der Walküren”), and a handful of great performances – with Lindo being particularly brilliant – that feel like gifts from the cast to a director going out of his way to leave them space to breathe and work.

Apart from these performances, I’m particularly fond of how Lee’s more eccentric directorial decisions here – like not de-aging his cast in the flashbacks in any way – lead to the most clear-eyed and revelatory moments, daring to be strange when that’s what this particular story needs. And for a guy with my tastes, it’s certainly nice to see Johnny Nguyen in a larger role here, and Danny Bilson (a failed videogame executive to some, the screenwriter of some of my favourite Empire Pictures films to me) as a co-writer.