Direction: Spike Lee
Country: USA
With a hot topic but overhyped in its violent scenes, Da 5 Bloods was originally written by Danny Bilson and Paul de Meo in 2013. Director Spike Lee re-adapted the script together with Kevin Wilmott (following their successful collaboration in BlackKklansman) to fit the African-American reality, after Oliver Stone has given up the project in 2016.
The story follows four black veterans (Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis and Isiah Whitlock Jr.) who decide to return to Vietnam to retrieve a buried box with gold and locate the body of their former leader, Stormin’ Norman (the late Chadwick Boseman).
Protracted and unpolished, this post-war treasure-hunt film is somewhat repetitive in some of the ideas, and it could have been even worse if it wasn’t for Lindo's strong performance. The director plays with flashbacks, real footage and photography to better center his subtexts and motivations, but outside of the moderately thrilling war sequences, there’s little to justify the film’s two-and-a-half hour runtime. This jungle trip, not deprived of challenges and problems itself, only intermittently sparks.
