Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee, 2020)

Having covered the single subject of racial conflict in America in BlacKkKlansman, Lee moves on to armed conflict between the US and other countries, albeit also still through the filter of institutionalised racism against black people with four Vietnam War veterans returning to the country to look for the remains of a comrade of theirs, as well as hidden gold bullion. But there is another filter too: the fog of memory, which colours the view that each one has of the past, and also how that past is shown to us.
Overall, the film straddles the buddy adventure genre and a polemic on the theme of American historical ethnic persecution with overt comparisons made between the race riots and police brutality back in the States, through newsreel footage, and the simultaneous ideological crusade that the soldiers are forced on in Vietnam, shown in flashback. The balancing act is an uneasy one, and that impacts the message adversely. It doesn't help that Lee cannot escape the one constant of American war films: the action is stylised like a shoot 'em up and one dead American, be they black or white, is meant to be more tragic than dozens of anonymous gooks shredded by bullets in Ramboesque fashion. The traumatised Viet vet trope is also overplayed: we've seen it too many times before for it to have much impact, however true it may be, and not all that convicing going on 50 years after the event either. Delroy Lindo, as the one of the group who hasn't been able to let the past go at all, turns in a bravura performance of instability, but that also overshadows the contribution of the other characters. Then another stock theme, that of gold against the soul, is overlaid and accordingly at times the film starts to remind you of those C-grade Spaghetti Westerns where the protagonists just rant incessantly about 'the gold, the gold'. And then when one of the band expires abruptly after stepping on a landmine, it's shot in such Grand Guignol fashion that the first though that came to my mind was Mr. Creosote exploding in The Meaning of Life, which surely was not the intention, unless Lee really is making a clever allusion to the perils of greed.
The director's explicit contribution to the Black Lives Matter movement, Da 5 Bloods does have many strengths too: the interplay between the old-timers is vibrant and the intermittent use of the Viet Cong radio propaganda broadcasts back in the day by Hanoi Hannah, imploring black GIs to give up doing The Man's dirty work, has unsettling parallels with Samuel L. Jackson's soothing radio DJ throughout Do the Right Thing. But ultimately it's a lack of focus in Lee's fusion of elegiac drama, bloody action and political diatribe that lets down the whole. And, caught between a military establishment who sent them to die and the local populace for whom the soldiers are just another bunch of imperialist invaders, the protagonists are the ultimate victims and playing the victim card over and over again just can't be the way forward.

6/10