DA 5 BLOODS
OUT NOW (NETFLIX)
CERT MA15+ / 155 MINS
DIRECTOR Spike Lee
CAST Delroy Lindo, Norm Lewis, Clarke Peters, Isiah Whitlock Jr, Chadwick Boseman
PLOT Four African-American veterans — Paul (Lindo), Eddie (Lewis), Melvin (Whitlock Jr) and Otis (Peters) — return to Vietnam in search of the remains of their fallen squad leader, Stormin’ Norman (Boseman). But they’re also motivated by the promise of the buried gold he helped them to hide.
IT FEELS BOTH reductive and redundant to refer to a Spike Lee joint as “timely”,recaps a long history of state-sponsored murder and abuse of Black people, and suppression of protests just like those against the recent police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade and so many more. But this film is also a conversation about American imperialism, weaving a connective thread between the crimes of law enforcement on home soil and the disproportionate conscription of Black people, as well as horrifying atrocities committed by US soldiers abroad. This already threatens to make the film sound like a debilitating affair, but it’s far from it — if anything, it’s often quite funny, with plenty of colourful banter to go around.
