Da 5 Bloods

Da 5 Bloods is a Netflix produced, Vietnam Era, fictional story directed by Spike Lee. The plot follows four black Vietnam War veterans about 40 years after the war, on a trip back to Vietnam searching for a deceased brothers remains and some long lost gold. 

The sets and the costumes were the only good parts about this movie. They were realistic and were able to properly transport you to the 60s and also bring you to the current time.

The acting was forced from a lot of the co-starts, they didn’t properly cast the younger versions of the main stars in the flashback scenes and the character development was so weak that you couldn’t really connect to any of the protagonists.

The monologues toward the end were unnecessary and even though a good amount the dialogue was appropriate for the age range of the characters, the script was corny.

The cinematography was outdated, the edits were terrible and the soundtrack reminded me of a late 90s movie, like Air Force One.

Although this movie is fictional it does draw on some historical accuracies and real-life experiences of Black soldiers during the Vietnam War. The re-telling of a story about the Black experience during Vietnam is important, and should be told, it is just unfortunate that it was filmed in such a cheap and trite B-movie type of way. Spike had all these statements that he wanted to make about the culture but could not translate it properly to film. I’ve noticed after watching a number of Spike Lee joints that they are hit and miss and for me this particular film was a huge miss.