Academy Award winner Spike Lee’s latest film, Da 5 Bloods, is a timely navigation of race relations in America. But it’s also a study of human trauma — both the psychological trauma from war, and the collective trauma of racial injustice.
The plot follows four African-American Vietnam War veterans who return to Vietnam in search for the remains of their squad leader and buried treasure, which serves as a metaphor for slavery reparations. But these men, drunk with the riches of gold, are quickly splintered by greed and power.
Pivotal to this devolvement is Paul (Delroy Lindo), a former GI who suffers from extensive PTSD. His character represents the thousands of veterans who returned home after the war but were never able to adjust to civilian life. His arc, losing grip of reality and resorting to violent and delusional ways to claw himself back, is at once disturbing and heartbreaking. Lindo gives a haunting performance — one that would be difficult to overlook come Oscars night.
Cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel experiments with different film formats in Da 5 Bloods. The present day is depicted in widescreen high-resolution, while the Vietnam War sequences are shot on 4:3 grainy 16mm. It serves as an interesting distinction between past and present, but in Da 5 Bloods, “past and present” is not just a narrative distinction — it is a thematic one.
When the film slips in and out of different aspect ratios, it’s disorienting to us as viewers just as it’s disorienting for the characters who are forced to confront past traumas.
Lee also handles themes of race relations with great care and nuance. These were African-American soldiers who were sent to prop up a corrupt Southeast Asian government no one thought was worth protecting, for a country that systematically disadvantaged them back home.
Da 5 Bloods tackles ideas of ignorance, comfortability, and privilege in a political climate when those issues could not be more prevalent.
But despite its weighty themes, Da 5 Bloods isn’t Lee’s best work. In fact, the first act is rather anemic. In filmmaking, it’s common practice that every scene, shot and line of dialogue is essential. But the first hour of Da 5 Bloods is bogged down in redundancies, amateurish acting and distracting plot conveniences.
Still, Lee manages to change gears quickly and revives the second half of his film with a heart-racing, and surprisingly contemplative, thriller.
Da 5 Bloods premiered on Netflix on June 12.