In tone ranging from serious to brutally heavy, this film about a black Vietnam veteran asks, why fight to the death for a country that suffocates you?
Original link: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/22/spike-lee-wraps-history-in-adventure-in-da-5-bloods
Author: Anthony Lane
Responding to the needs of the times, but not content to give us just one movie, Spike Lee recently released two works, a clever 95-second 3 Brothers video composed of three videos, each about dying at the hands of the police One of the black civilians in the series, two of whom, Eric Garner and George Floyd, are all too real, while the third, Radio Raheem, is a character in Spike Lee's "Do What You Should ". This mini-movie shows more than just a coincidence of fiction and reality (every victim suffocates to death), Lee seems to be saying, in a tone of anger and remorse, "I told you so."
His second film, Da 5 Blood, was longer at about two and a half hours and told the story of four men: Paul (Delroy Lindo), Otis (Clarke Peters), Eddie (Norm Lewis), and Melvin (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.). Years ago, they were comrades in the Vietnam War, and now, as four elderly people, they are more or less friends, bound by the trivialities of their respective lives and unable to be as close as they once were. There are so many internal-dedicated gestures that you wonder if they're trying to prove that what they're afraid of is gone.
They reunite in Ho Chi Minh City to find the original squad leader Norman (Chadwick Boseman), the fifth man in question, who was shot and killed in the confrontation with the Viet Cong. Another unknown purpose is to find out the C-47 plane sent by the CIA and shot down by the locals, carrying gold bars for them as a reward.
Unsurprisingly, the tone of the film transitions from serious to brutally heavy with Terence Blanchard's score. Lee always likes to make our movie tickets worth it, cramming more movies where the movie hits the spot. The plot about companions sharing gold bullion from war comes from Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant's "The Enigma ", the soundtrack accompanying the rocking of the ship is from Wagner's "Valkyrie" in " Apocalypse Now ", Eddie Roars in the Middle "These Hollywood bastards are trying to come back and win the Vietnam War," referring to Stallone's " First Blood " and the oddly smiling Chuck Norris from " Vietnam Vanguard ." The film's climax, however, doesn't avoid falling into the trap of a gang of troubled Americans confronting gun-toting Vietnamese. Weird to me.
So what are we left with? On the one hand, Paul faces the contradictory father-son relationship presented by the chasing son, and on the other hand, Otis finds out that he has a child in Vietnam. Then came the French, the holy Hedy Bouvier (Mélanie Thierry), in a LAMB uniform, meaning "Love Against Bombs and Mines", and Desroche (Jean Reno) in a white suit. None of the above, however, does anything for the core, as the film about the 1944 African-American Army in Italy, The Miracle of Santa Ana , becomes less certain after leaving familiar territory.
On the other hand, because this is still Spike Lee's work after all, the frame would be narrowed, like a curtain drawn, when depicting the Vietnam War era. We see Paul and his comrades in full gear, still the same old cast, with the same wrinkles and flimsy knees. There is no special effect CGI, which is a resistance to De Niro being "rejuvenated" by complicated technology in "The Irishman". Last year, Lee mentioned how the group looked as adults trapped in the trauma of that Southeast Asian land, including their training. Years later, in the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, when children throw cannonballs at them, they will still lie down like a conditioned reflex.
In short, Lee's new film is a history lesson told in an adventure. It's important to note that history haunts us forever, and we can't get rid of it. In his films, Lee has always been a documentarian, and he doesn't hesitate to interrupt his characters' chatter with a still photo of Milton L. Olive. Olive III (1965), for example, lays down on a grenade to save his comrade, with the actor introducing "He was the first man to receive the Medal of Honor in the Vietnam War." But, you wouldn't question that by asking There is no respect for the sacrifice. So the film opens with a clip of Muhammad Ali denying him any feud with the Vietnamese, followed by Bobby Seale in 1968, who declares: "Here we are, The damn Vietnam War, and we're still getting nowhere but racist police brutality."
Hidden in the unmentioned is that there is a connection between that time and the present. Lee implied that if your country still suffocates you, why fight to the death for your country? When Paul's gang fought for the gold, they didn't attack the lost ark; they demanded reparation for being intentionally impoverished for centuries. As Norman put it, in repulsive recollection, "America owes us." That's a brilliant argument, and I wish I could hear his words hit the ground running in a crowded movie theater. Mind you, with the social and political upheaval that has unfolded in Minneapolis in recent weeks following the death of George Floyd, it's easy to imagine viewers watching the film online and feeling the outrage even at home.
John David Washington's presence as a staunch cop calms BlacKkKlansman , and the heart of this new film should belong to Delroy Lindo as Paul Anger, tears, and almost uncontrollable. He's a Trump voter, has a maga hat; he's a mess, he ends up speaking to the camera like a witness to a natural disaster, and he breaks your heart. I will never forget when he walked into the jungle alone, shouting "Twenty-Three Psalms" as if giving an order, "The Lord is my shepherd, and I will not want it," he cried, heavily Make a "t" ending. He went to war, poor soul, and never came back.
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