It’s very much like the notably fearless Lee to invoke American cinema’s most memorable treatise on the Vietnam War so early in his film.
“Da 5 Bloods” only encounters the warzone of Vietnam in brief flashbacks and instead it is focused on the way the remains of a war endure.
In this way, “Da 5 Bloods” becomes a restless meshing of a very straightforward adventure story, with vignettes of a forgotten war and an underbelly of visceral race critique.
The men’s trek to the jungle is deliberately evocative of the journey into darkness in “Apocalypse Now”, and Lee gives each remaining Blood (played excellently by Delroy Lindo as Paul, Clarke Peters as Otis, Norm Lewis as Eddie and Isiah Whitlock Jr as Melvin) much scope for emotive turns as they wrestle with themselves and each other.
“Da 5 Bloods” is less thoughtful on gender than it can be, but then the film’s evisceration of masculinity (albeit, less virulent than its critique on class and race) is potent enough to explain that hesitance.
