266.
Da 5 Bloods
5/10
Finally getting around to film 4 out of 26 and we come across Da 5 Bloods. I hadn't heard much about this movie at all but seen it advertised when it first came on to Netflix. At the time I was knee-deep in some series but now I have the time to watch this 154-minute movie. When a movie is that long, it is always a worry as to whether it will feel like its a trial or will it fly by. Having a small read about the plot on Netflix, we are about to watch four African American vets return to Vietnam to seek the remains of their fallen squad leader whilst also on the trail for the gold fortune that he helped them hide.
As the movie started, I saw that it is going to be directed by Spike Lee. The only other movie I had seen from him was BlacKkKlansman, which was very enjoyable but came with a learning aspect also and some real footage to shock at the end. This movie began with that kind of footage. It also continued through the first third of the film.
What I have seen so far is four older gents making their wat to Vietnam and meeting up with their tour guide. I only recognise one gent and that's Delroy Lindo. I didn't exactly know him by name but more by his face in some mediocre movies. The storyline for me comes in two main parts. We have the build-up to the gents setting up a plan to extract the gold out of the country whilst also being introduced to side characters that we think may come in to play later. These are the shady lot that are going to help with the gold and others we meet are in the country to help rid the areas of landmines. We follow this gang on their travel through to coordinates that they had locked away but flip back and fore with flashbacks of how they landed in the war, the killing of their leader and I suddenly see a face a definitely recognise. The now late Chadwick Boseman is the man to play their leader. Back at the present day, we discover each characteristic of the gang as one's son also tags along looking to blackmail his estranged father. One of the guys was always portrayed as a well off businessman, the others enjoying their life but the one who's son has come, is already a little bit of a loose cannon.
We get to the site of the body and shit is starting to hit the fan, the businessman reveals that he has actually lost all of his money and as for the loose cannon Paul, he's waving a gun about as they gang bumps into those landmine removers. Eddie, the businessman is trying to keep the scabbling to a low but as he walks around with a gold bar, he steps on a landmine and loses his lower half before eventually dying. This is when Paul's reality really breaks down/ He thinks everyone is after him and he's not far from the truth. His friends want to take the gun off him but the guy that they had planned on getting the gold out of the country has also turned on them. After a shoot out, Paul's son gets shot on the leg but Paul decides it's a man down and is happy to leave him there. He is left to go alone as the other men stick with the young man and adapt to another plan. Paul meets his match as he quickly descends into madness, seeing the ghost of his former superior before being shot to shit by a resurgence of the local Vietnamese mercenaries who are after the gold for their employer, who our gents thought they had working alongside themselves. Now as for the others, the tour guide and the remaining mine disposal experts, they have made their way to some old ruins as a final stand. All hell breaks loose and we are only left with a few survivors. These include the tag along son and a female disposal expert that he was fond of in the bar before they left on this journey and has fallen for in only a matter of days. Being left with most of the gold, they use the tour guide's contacts to get it out of the country, for a share of course. The remaining is split to help the mine expert's charity and the wounded son, who is a teacher, makes sure the families receive some and the rest is donated to the Black Lives Matter movement. We end there.
I'm trying to think where to begin. The movie felt the whole 2 hours and 34 minutes that you were promised but that isn't a good thing. It was split in half with the first being the setting up and interaction giving us a tiny bit of background to each character but at the same time, overflowing certain aspects that we didn't need. The second half of the movie was pretty much carnage on the screen and there wasn't much information to take in but at least there were a lot more entertaining aspects taking place. The storyline wasn't a confusing one to follow by any means, we knew the mission, we knew each man and could guess the demise of certain characters. Without trying to sound prejudice, at times the movie sounded very preachy when it overdone some of the real-life stories and photos at the wrong time of the story.
No-one really stood out for me character-wise, they were all OK but I wouldn't say I was made to support anyone and their choices, that's what made most of this easily forgettable to me. At times it was like a gang of squabbling teenagers with one of them trying to take the lead but the rest not really following suit, including the son.
The technical aspects of the movie are the moments that will stick with me more than anything else. As we got our flashbacks, we would see the gang fighting in the war. The camera would narrow as if an older style of film was being watched. The fighting scenes were made to look extremely cheap, the guns had flashes like a cheap straight to DVD movie with the villains shooting like Stormtroopers but our main characters picking headshots, even if it was the first gun that had ever picked up. It was an interesting style but was a little bit laughable.
There are much better films out there and I really enjoyed BlacKkKlansman so I had some high hopes for this one and it fell way short. The film was a bit of a mess and as I already mentioned, you couldn't invest in any of the characters, leaving you with no sense of satisfaction if they were going to succeed and no care if they were going to lose. The flashbacks hardly made our characters younger along with a lot of tiny flaws that group together as a mishmash of mistakes. Does this truly do justice to the 'Bloods' that lost their lives? For me, there may have been too many political overtones and stereotypes to give us a movie that we could stand attention to but also enjoy.
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