![]() Spike Lee on 'BlacKkKlansman' and Life in Trump's America Vinh doesn’t understand why the bloods only want him to guide them to the edge of the jungle, but no further. The bloods hire a Vietnamese guide, Vinh Tran (martial-arts master Johnny Trí Nguyễn), whose own family was torn apart by the war. Kudos to Lee for filling in the Vietnamese side of the equation either neglected or demonized by the mainstream. Otis reels when he reunites with former lover Tiên (Lê Y Lan ) and learns they have a daughter. And Peters, so good on The Wire, is revelatory as Otis, a former medic who dipped into his own drug supply and still mustered the authority to succeed Norman when enemy fire cut him down. makes you see how booze, opiods and adultery aren’t doing the trick for Melvin. The bloods party hard in a futile attempt to blur their pain. As the bloods gather at a bar/dance club called Apocalypse Now, elderly Vietnamese guides - once sworn enemies from the North and South - buy each other drinks and vie to offer tours of the scorched earth left by what they call “America’s war.” Signs from fast-food franchises illuminate the streets, signaling the victory of capitalism. It’s also traumatic, and the film makes you feel it. “It’s a stone-cold trip being back here in country,” says Eddie. With the help of vibrant location shooting in Thailand and Vietnam from the superb cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel ( Bohemian Rhapsody) and an evocative score by Terence Blanchard that ups its resonance with soulful cuts from Marvin Gaye’s seminal 1971 album “What’s Going On,” Lee sets the scene. Instead, Lee lets the contrast illustrate how their haunted past and present are one. A word about those flashbacks: The older actors are not digitally de-aged, Irishman-style, to suggest their younger selves. They idolized their fallen squad leader, Stormin’ Norman, seen in flashbacks and played by Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman. But the bond these men, including Otis (Clarke Peters) and Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), have for each other is truly in their blood. Paul is too proud to accept charity from Eddie (Norm Lewis), the owner of national car dealership who hides his impending bankruptcy. “I’m tired of not getting mine,” he says, touching on the theme of black disenfranchisement that courses through the film. Paul, played with lightning intensity by Delroy Lindo, is even a Trump voter his fellow bloods are disgusted to see their PTSD-afflicted brother wearing a MAGA hat. ![]() The four remaining “bloods,” as black soldiers called themselves, we follow aren’t carved out of the John Wayne playbook when they meet up at a hotel in Ho Chi Minh City to begin their mission. And in adapting a script about white soldiers by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo that Platoon’s Oliver Stone was originally slated to direct, Lee and frequent co-writer Kevin Willmott make sure to divest the film of whitewashed myths about heroism. The filmmaker has a legit gripe against the white face Hollywood puts on war. The past is prologue as Lee burns the demoralizing legacy of Nam. The words of Kwame Toure boom like thunder: “America has declared war on black people.” There’s Malcolm X expressing what happens when “you take 20 million black people and make them fight all your wars and pick all your cotton and never give them any recompense.” There’s Bobby Seale with facts and figures about the 186,000 black men who fought in the Civil War and the 850,000 conscripted in World War II in response to a promise of freedom that never came (“Now here we go with the damn Vietnam War and we still ain’t getting nothin’ but racist police brutality”). Lee kicks off class with archival news footage that seems tailor-made for right now: There’s Muhammad Ali refusing to submit to a draft that would have him kill Vietcong (“ They never called me nigger. This is a Spike Lee joint and a Spike Lee history lesson. ![]() But it’s also personal filmmaking at its prodding, profound best. Lee’s righteous anger in Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X and BlacKkKlansman rises to gale force here. Lee had no idea that his movie would be released as the killing of George Floyd would inspire people to take to the streets in protest, but he’s known in his bones how it felt for Black Americans to bear the crushing weight of a knee on their necks. Debuting on Netflix on June 12th, Da 5 Bloods speaks urgently to our current moment. Spike Lee hits a new career peak with this game-changer about four, emotionally damaged African-American veterans who return to Vietnam in the Trump era to recover the body of their fallen brother-in-arms -n and maybe a semblance of their former selves.
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