I have seen a ton of Vietnam movies in my lifetime. I am a child of the 80’s, a generation X-er, which means I grew up during the time when the “Brat-Pack” ruled the cinema. If you are more than ten years younger than me you might have to look up that term, but for reference, “Brat-Pack” loosely referred to a rotating group of young actors (mostly boys splashed across the covers of teen beat magazines) popular in Hollywood at the time. Sean Penn, Tom Cruise, Michael J. Fox, Kiefer Sutherland…teens who went from talented heartthrobs to powerful mega-stars and have perhaps settled into comfortable middle aged actor status by now.

I understood what the Vietnam War was before anyone explained it to me. I thankfully didn’t have to hear stories from my father whose number never came up for the draft and we hadn’t quite reached that part of history in school yet, so as usual for me everything I needed to know I was learning from the movies.

And the 80’s was chock full of Vietnam movies. The surrounding decades are loaded down with plenty of war pictures, mostly WWII, and rightly so. The last two decades alone are inundated with them. Sure, there are a few Civil War era flicks, couple Iraq War conflict films, one WWI movie, even a conflict in Mogadishu! In fact, I can name dozens of movies from the 60’s and 70’s and again the 90’s and right on through the 21st century where the war-time subject is anything BUT Vietnam.
But in the 80’s? No sign of WWII, or any other war for that matter. It was Vietnam all the way. Full Metal Jacket, Born on the 4th of July, Casualties of War, 1969, Good Morning Vietnam, ALL of the Rambo movies of course, and the big one – Platoon!

Like I said, its been a while since anyone has made a Vietnam flic. When I finally decided to sit down and watch Da 5 Bloods I had to do the research to even remember what the Vietnam War was all about. Way too complicated to go into here, but it’s the first movie of its kind I’ve seen in almost 30 years. And it’s good. I mean not Platoon level good of course. And nothing will over take Good Morning Vietnam in my book, but this is a solid movie.

So basically, The Bloods consist of 5 guys, four of whom made it out of ‘Nam alive. They have met up again forty odd years later in Ho Chi Minh City with plans to retrieve their fallen comrade’s remains from deep within the jungle.

Also hidden in the jungle are dozens of gold bars buried under a mudslide. The mud has recently shifted, allowing them access to their crashed plane, their friend and their treasure. They have hired a Vietnamese guide named Vihn who is only allowed to take them just so far, they have a French businessman (played by an aging Jean Reno) ready to help get their gold out of the country for them. Complicating matters are the appearances of a Vietnamese girlfriend with a now grown daughter of one of the soldiers (“Miss Saigon” anyone?) the son of one of the bloods, a trio of land-mine clearing do-gooders and a gang of archetypal Asian bad guys who want the gold for themselves.

Out of all of these tropes only the son really works. It’s the four men we want to focus on and the flashbacks of the war. Those moments are where Spike Lee’s filmmaking and story work the best. Delroy Lindo as Paul is at his very best as a man teetering on the edge. Years of post-traumatic stress have left him angry and bullish. Whatever friendship he once shared with his buddies is long gone. He can barely stand to be around them or anyone for long, and he certainly not comfortable back in Vietnam. When his son David arrives, worried and concerned for his state of mind, Paul shambles back and forth between insulting him and berating him, to insisting to the others that is boy get a fair share! Through Paul, we see everything that represents what I understood about Vietnam and what the soldiers went through. He cannot admit anything is wrong, but he cannot bare to be close to any of the people there. Strangely, the people of north and South Vietnam have come together. Their civil war is over and they greet Americans with open arms. But for Paul, who’s racism is right on his sleeve, everyone looks the same and when one insistent man at market gets to near, and he lets that word “gook” fly, its over. The boy on the boat recognizes Paul as an American soldier who possibly killed his parents.

Seeing this through my grandfather’s eyes (who fought in the Korean War) the year I moved into my house when I was five and he found out that not only were our next door neighbors Korean but that I would be riding the bus to school with their six year old son…I understand now why he was upset.
Or when Mr. Bishop, the seventy year old Italian-American teaching assistant I work with, half-jokingly drops some slang word to describe an Asian family or child (whether they are Vietnamese or not) I understand.

Isiah Whitlock Jr. as Melvin is meant to be the comic relief. It is hard to pinpoint where exactly I have seen him before. He is a ‘that-guy’ actor who seems to show up in all sorts of movies and shows. Apparently, it is his creative way of reciting the word “Shiiiiiiiit” that got him this role. He along with Norm Lewis as Eddie are the secondary of the four guys and it is such a pleasure for me to see this gentleman on the big screen. Norm is a Broadway superstar, making history as the first African American man to play the Phantom in the “Phantom of the Opera”{. He is also my personal favorite ever Javert in the 25th anniversary concert of “Les Miserables”. By far the weakest actor of the four men, he is certainly holding his own!

But my favorite performance comes from Clarke Peters as Otis, the calming level-headed presence of the group. Both Clarke and Delroy have been on stage before and you can tell. These guys know how to play a scene. They have a sense of building tension, they aren’t afraid of being old and looking dirty and mean. These guys aren’t friends anymore. Clarke especially is so relatable I feel like I know him. When David refers to him as his ‘godfather’ I felt myself nodding my head. Of course he is. He seems like that guy. Uncle Clarke, godfather Clarke, whatever! This man makes acting look easy. He is just living.

***SPOILERS RIGHT NOW

Throughout the movie Lee employs an interesting use of flashbacks with the guys, mostly Paul, remembering their old pal Norman, Stormin Norman (no really). Played by a very skinny Chadwick Boseman. The king of Wakanda himself, impressive in that he went out of his way to erase the black panther from my memory. It wasn’t just the weight, it was everything. His stance, his demeanor. He was Hugh Jackman out of the gate. It is damn near impossible to go from Marvel superstardom to a small acting part like that without all of us in the audience screaming “Oh my god its Black Panther!” And I didn’t. He was cocky in this sort of childish way that must have been about right for a young 20-something dropped into a war zone.

And to play off four men twice your age must have been intimidating. Because that is what the director chose to do here. Instead of hiring four actors who would look like younger versions of our guys, Spike just had them play themselves. Almost as if in a dream. They were just old men reliving the past. I loved the choice.

And in the end when you find out Paul’s big secret it allows for a much more intimate moment since it is Delroy Lindo himself acting it out with Boseman. They don’t all make it out sadly. The movie takes a hard right Tarentino like turn. I was a little surprised actually. I think I liked it. Actually, I’m not sure. It got a little silly here and there. I didn’t want these guys to die. They didn’t deserve it. Maybe Paul needed to die. But not like he did, not alone without his friends. Not without some sort of redemption for what he did.

The entire last half hour of the film I didn’t buy. It was confusing and unnecessary. I wanted more of a focus on the guys and their relationship. Lee was so smart adding into the flashbacks all of these moments of the African American soldier’s experience in Vietnam. Things that the average person may not know about. Radio broadcasts from Hanoi Hannah for instance, used to torture soldiers with propaganda, was often filled with some terrible truths- the assassination of Martin Luther King and the fact that the percentage of black men fighting in the war compared to the percentage of the population in the U.S. left them scratching their heads and wondering if it was all worth their while.

When the movie stays here its wonderful. When it drifts into action sequences or bizarre Quentin Tarentino level death silliness…when I am not sure if I should be laughing or taking it seriously or not, that is when the movie stumbles for me. I didn’t care about the three French college type kids detonating old bombs out of the kindness of their hearts, or the random gang of un-named Vietnamese hitmen working for the French guy (I think?) because you just knew there would HAVE to be bad guys to kill off at some point. But, these are minor complaints to an otherwise decent addition to the Vietnam war movie cannon.


I read somewhere that Spike almost had Denzel Washington and Sam Jackson almost on board for this project. Can you imagine? Throw in Lawrence Fishburne as Paul and you would be blown away by the power coming off of the screen!!! But in the end that would have been a mistake. You would have lost all of that quiet realism that makes most of the film great.
4 out of 5 stars for me!