Review : Da 5 Bloods

“Four African American vets battle the forces of man and nature when they return to Vietnam seeking the remains of their fallen squad leader and the gold fortune he helped them hide.”

I genuinely think, this is the best movie Spike Lee has ever made, and its still fully in his wheelhouse, so its a really interesting combination of his style of movie, with something I think is a little more commercial. That could be down to the look of this film, because he does have a lot of those really interesting hand held moments, but he also has some really breath taking imagery of Vietnam here, which I’m not sure is something he had ever really been “known” for. He does manage to pack this movie with really great and really interesting acting roles for both his main and side cast. A lot of those accolades are going to be for Delroy Lindo, but I really think that Jonathan Majors steals not just all his scenes, but this entire movie, and his character has one of the best arches in the movie. This is a longer movie, but I really couldn’t find much fat to trim off it, and it does a lot in that time frame. Theres only really one thing keeping this movie from being a total homerun for me, and those are the moments where its comes across just a little to in your face with the history lessons, I get what Spike is doing, but its still a movie first so I have to judge it as such. All in all though, Da 5 Bloods is a really well made movie, with a great message, and it couldn’t be more timely.

Review Score : 9 out of 10