Oscar-Contenders
Watched in Cairo, Egypt
Rating: 3/10
From all the film's which could be nominated in a category at this year's Oscars, Da 5 Bloods was the one I was the least excited for. I didn't watch it all that time since its release on purpose, but watched it now only because I want to watch all Oscar contenders. The reason for having no interest in watching this is that I am simply no fan of Spike Lee's filmography after 2000. 25th Hour and Inside Man were alright, but – I know I'm rather alone with that opinion - BlackkKlansman was a ridiculous film in my eyes. I think that the critically acclaimed film is ethically extremely questionable, showing that Lee might pretend being on the black‘s side, but having no idea of their actual struggle. I found the there are also good cops-narrative, which is simply denying the structural racism in the police institution all around the world, extremely questionable and the opposite of progressive, exactly what the Black Community and the Black Lives Matter Movement doesn't need at all. Read my review here.
Having watched Da 5 Bloods now, I can confirm that the film is even worse that Blackkklansman. From the first minutes on, I found the film distasteful, on a narrative and intellectual level almost dull and the screenplay a huge disappointment - stereotypical characters with even more stereotypical dialogues.
Funnily enough, I have exactly the same problem with this film as I had with Blackkklansman - I find the topic morally extremely questionable and
ambivalent.
I get Lee's point. Yes, POC were used by the government and died in the Vietnam war. But while there was an incredible movement in the USA against the war, while
Hippies fought against it and a monk set himself on fire, Spike Lee has no better idea to approach the deeply complex topic by sending a group of people who have no shame what their country did
back then back into the country to find gold they buried there. The huge problem is that the Vietnam war was a deeply unjust war. Any way of telling it, which is not from a Vietnamese perspective or at least stating that the US and France committed tons of war crimes, is deeply
wrong. Apocalypse Now isn't told from a Vietnamese perspective, but despite the fact it was made in much less progressive times, it's much more critical with the events than
Spike Lee's film made in 2020. Apocalypse Now showed the cruelty and the extreme futility of the war, while the characters in Da 5 Bloods only say things like
"That man was the best soldier who ever lived" (what does that even mean, the best soldier? For killing hundreds of people beacuse they were communists, or why?).
There is one scene in the first third of the film which summarizes the film's problem extremely well. It shows the 5 Bloods in a flashback how they are talking about
black rights, just seconds after killing some Vietnamese soldiers. This is just so, so morally ambivalent and wrong.
The film makes a few statements towards this topic, no doubt- for example through the radio announcement when Martin Luther King was murdered. The woman who speaks
in the radio rightfully says that the Black troops, forming 32% of soldiers fighting in the Vietnam war, should be fighting at home for civil rights instead of getting killed (and killing! (- my
addition)) in Vietnam. After that, the 5 Bloods don't know any better than to shout and to fire their weapons into the air as if they have absolutely nothing in their brains (spoiler: they don't,
except Norman).
Of course you could argue that Lee wanted to show us characters who just didn't know any better, who were forced into the war by their government. Lee does criticize
his characters a few times, especially by showing the main character wearing a Trump campaign hat all the time.
But argueing in such a way isn't right, it would deny the filmmaker's ideological position. After all, it's Spike Lee who chose to make a film about some Black
Veterans who didn't understand the political situation and to send them back to the country where they killed hundreds for US-American anti-communist interests. Lee didn't choose to make a film
about the protests by the Black Community against the unjust war in the US. There would have been enough
stories to tell, as shown in the film, even MLK was strongly against the war. The film could be about the consequences if Black People didn't want to go to war.
But no, Lee chose to show the world these people, and the way he shows them is extremely weird.
An example for that is using Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" in a scene in which the 5 Bloods drive on a boat into the jungle. Of course, Lee is referring
with this piece of classical music to Apocalypse Now, to the iconic scene in which the US soldiers fly with helicopters and kill a whole village of innocent, unarmed people. Why on
earth did Lee now decide to use it for a rather happy scene in which the Veterans drive back into the jungle? What is his message? I could completely understand if he'd choose to play Wagner in a
scene in which the Bloods are killing some Vietnamese (there are enough of those scenes in the film anyway), but playing it for the beginning of an adventure treasure hunt, which is throughout
the whole film very rarely morally questioned, is just wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.
It doesn't make it any better that the deeply unlikeable characters call the locals "backward-ass motherfuckers" and showing zero respect towards the Vietnamese citizen. Of course, you could argue once more that it's just one of the characters who said this, what doesn't mean that Lee shares that position. But if you put statements like this in an "anti-racist" film, you have to put in a scene which goes against that scene. Just some other character correcting him, or at least a scene in which any of the characters shows regret for having participated in the war. But instead, the only comments made on the war are things like "there were losses on both sides". Furthermore, as Lee clearly pretends to fight in an anti-racist cause: calling a Vietnamese man a "yellow nigga" is also racist, calling a bigger man a "fat boy" is disrespectful.
After all these and many more examples, we watch them fight all the time about absurdities and go on an adventure treasure hunt all-included (mines, shoot-outs, snakes, every stereotype for a good djungle film, oh yeah!) for annoying 1.5 more hours. The thing is just that I didn't care anymore about these guys after only 20 minutes.
Same as in Blakkklansman (there it was clips was of far-right protestors and anti-black violence), at the end Lee puts video clips of the Black Lives Matter Movement and Martin Luther King – which don’t fit and don't work at all. Suddenly putting those clips there is simply lazy and to generate good reviews – who would want to give a bad rating to a film which "supports" BLM? But the truth is, this film is as little against the Vietnam War as it is pro Black Rights. This film isn't progressive, but the worst film of this year's Oscar Contenders.
The only good things I can mention about Da 5 Bloods are Newton Thomas Sigel‘s typically fantastic cinematography and Chadwick Boseman‘s performance, the only one which stood out in my eyes.
I can understand that many people liked Blackkklansman - there are simply too many people who don't understand that the police is part of the problem -, but I can't understand what people think is good about this. Please, please, go watch something about the protests against the Vietnam war instead. Or watch Apocalypse Now. Or if you want to watch something about Black Civil Rights, go watch Judas and the Black Messiah. Just don't watch this morally completely wrong film, or at least think about what is shown here.
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