Hammerman Ikon

Hammerman Ikon Film Guide

Da 5 Bloods
2020
**½
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Mélanie Thierry, Paul Walter Hauser, Jasper Pääkkönen, Jean Reno, Chadwick Boseman

The Three Kings meets black history week in this entertaining but preachy and endlessly long drama about four black veterans who travel to Vietnam to bring back the remains of their fallen comrade and a crateful of gold bars they buried during the war. Spike Lee and Kevin Willmott rewrote an old spec script, and to be frank, the resulting story feels somehow out of whack, like it was originally set in the 1990s. This first manifests itself in the opening 30 minutes when one of the Bloods tells that his son just graduated from high school and another one discovers that he fathered a child 50 years ago who now looks like she's 30. Credibility is further stretched when this group of 70-year-olds trek through the hot jungle with incredibly heavy backpacks. In any case, the performances are solid.