Da 5 Bloods

I have many things to say about Spike Lee’s newest movie, Da 5 Bloods, available on Netflix.

First, I want to say something I have not seen before now in other reviews: this is a violent, bloody movie and not for those who are sensitive to such elements. People are maimed, shot, blown up, bitten by snakes and beaten and tortured in vivid color, with no chance to avert eyes from the realities.

But if that is not a deterrent to a viewer, then the movie is well worth spending the 2 1/2 hour running time. It is a study of forgiveness, redemption, betrayal, friendship, repressed anger, and all of Lee’s usual themes: systemic racism, financial greed, political corruption and life in a society gone sour. It is a flawed but magnificent piece which raises questions we are seeing reflected in the nightly news.

As vivid as the violent scenes are, the other photography is equally vivid and iconic: the Delta winding its way through the country, the opulent brothels and the seedy bars, and the ever-present jungle, which steams and throbs and hides both gold and explosives and which envelopes the dead quickly and heartlessly. Although we see scenes of Vietnam as it is today, the photography is deliberately geared toward evoking a time when Vietnam was a mysterious war zone where survival could never be taken for granted.

On surface the story is simple: four Vietnam War Black American veterans return to Ho Chi Minh City in search of the remains of their fifth comrade, the company commander of the 1st Infantry Division, and the gold a CIA helicopter was carrying when it was shot down. They meet in a restored country in a posh hotel to plan their trip back into the jungle and their return home as wealthy men.

Plans are swiftly made. One man visits his old lover who arranges with a French mercenary to cash the gold for the veterans. Another hires a local guide to take them to the jungle and to return for them later.

That’s about as simple as this movie ever gets. Each man is ridden with anger at the betrayal of their country when they returned home, and also hiding personal secrets from these friends. We learn soon enough that one has developed a dependency on Oxycontin, one has lost all his money in the financial fallout, the one who visited his old lover has found he fathered and left behind a child, and one is a Trump supporter with a violent temper and an estranged son. His son appears the night before they leave and demands to go with them.

The drunken geniality of the initial meeting vanishes as their search for gold leaves them tired, hostile and fighting among themselves. They find their friend’s remains and the gold, but this is not destined to be a happy story.

One by one the Bloods die in tragic ways. The first steps on a mine shortly after admitting to them that his entire life has been lived as a lie.

The son has been attracted to a young French woman who works with an NGO dedicated to finding land mines left in the jungle. She and two other NGO workers appear just after the friends find the gold and they help rescue him when he steps on a mine. But his father does not trust these NGO workers because he believes they will tell the authorities about the gold, so he ties them all up. He finds his son trying to untie the young woman and threatens them all with a gun, loudly disowning his son.

Driven mad by both real and imagined betrayals, he heads out alone, where he is first bitten by a snake, loses all his gold, stumbles into the river, and is riddled with bullets by thugs sent to steal the gold. Though bloody and violent, this is the most moving scene in the film, where a delirious and dying man comes to grips with having accidentally killed his own friend during the War. He dies feeling forgiven and finally free of his post traumatic stress, no longer caring about the gold or hating anyone.

Meantime, one of the young NGO workers escapes but is captured by thugs sent by the Frenchman to kill the veterans and steal the gold. They force him to take them to the group which by now has found and reunited with their guide. The NGO worker attempts to escape and steps on a mine and dies. The son is wounded by the thugs but the group manages to go to a temple and hole up.

At the temple the bloody finale ties up all the remaining issues. One of the remaining two vets throws himself on a grenade to save the other. Only one Blood emerges from the fray, left to go back to Ho Chi Minh City to claim his daughter and her mother after all these years. The two NGO members get a share of the gold and a chance to bring their NGO to prominence. The son gets his share. The widow of the vet who died for his friend at the temple gets a share. The vet who stepped on the mine had no family so his share goes to fund Black Lives Matter. An unintended justice has been served at the cost of many lives and the resolution of many sorrows.

But some of this is just a bit too tidy. Do undercover groups still operate in Vietnam, survivors who want only to destroy any Americans who come back to visit the country now? Would the country really allow American soldiers just to come into the country at will and trek around the back country? True, these soldiers carried official US papers authorizing them to find the remains, but the US would be unlikely to sanction such a mission. Would NGOs be walking around locating and detonating mines? Also, ages just don’t match up here. The soldier’s lover, even if a teen when he met her, is still too young to have born a child who seems almost her age, and also too young. These all seem to be more plot contrivance than reality, and these inconsistencies mar the narrative. I’m not convinced the pursuit by the Frenchman’s henchmen was necessary, nor the ensuing violence. The plot could have stood, and the point been made, with less blood and less destruction. The less-than-subtle swipe at French presence in Vietnam added nothing of value, nor did the implication that many of the Vietnamese remain savage.

However, as a study in post traumatic stress, a comment on the forced enlistment of Black men to fight Asian men, on how violence continues on into all levels of society long after wars cease, this succeeds brilliantly. We are left thinking about the many children fathered and left behind, and about the mines left to scar the country for many more generations. The movies provides no end of topics for further commentary.

I could take or leave the vintage footage which precedes and is interlarded with the main film. The movie could have been shortened by its exclusion with no loss of message. If anything, it is an unrelated distraction.