Our July Sunday Corner With Lee Liberman -- DA 5 BLOODS: Apocalypse Here

This post is written by our

monthly correspondent, Lee Liberman

Spike Lee’s journey into the Vietnam miasma with black vets (Netflix) is a hot mess and a painful experience for this (white) viewer — it’s his scream of rage following millennia of white discrimination against non-whites because the white establishment could. I hated/loved/admired the 2.5 hour ungrammatical screed for making me suffer knowing what has been suffered. Watching Spike’s film is like the misery of our communal watch of George Floyd, boot-on-neck, for nine+ minutes. But Spike is also funny, witty, affectionate, honest and a lively storyteller — DA  5 BLOODS is a crazy ride, a comic-book page-turner, a lesson.

Spike, above left, with his stars in chief, Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr., ), Paul (Delroy Lindo), David (Jonathan Majors), Otis (Clarke Peters), Eddie (Norm Lewis), goads you through their mission that starts full of joy at lively bar in Vietnam named Apocalypse Now. There, in modern Ho Chi Minh City, four (fictional) aging vets of the now old despised war have reunited to launch the recovery of the body of the fifth Blood (‘Blood’ is a term of brotherhood among black servicemen); below, they find their brother’s skull.

The departed is hero-turned-myth, ‘Stormin Norman,’ on whom the light shined, killed long ago in a firefight. He is played in flashbacks by Chadwick Boseman (below) a face known for his movie roles playing other myth-makers: Black Panther, Jackie Robinson, Thurgood Marshall and James Brown.

The buddy group have also tasked themselves with finding a buried trunk of gold bars and figuring out how to divvy up the haul. Lee juxtaposes the Vietnam of the 60’s-70’s with race wars at home, setting apart the flashbacks using a square format and period camera equipment. It works seamlessly, as though you were busy in the present while seeing the past in your mind. He also puts today’s aging vets into flashbacks with heroic young Norman (second and third photos below) kaleidoscoping past and present.

Hanoi Hannah’s Famed North Vietnamese propagandist Hanoi Hannah (above l, who died at 87 in 2016, and Ngo Thanh Van, who plays her) comes through the portable radio on the battlefield to report Martin Luther King’s assassination and the uprisings in 122 cities that followed with near a third of the fighting men in Vietnam being black. She says: ‘Is it fair that you are fighting the white man’s war? Have a good day gentlemen…stay safe’. Da Bloods react to the news of King’s death with rage and grief....(below)

Otis quotes Norman’s influence on them to his godson, David, who has joined the quartet to repair emotional distance with his father Paul: ‘Norman taught us Black history when it wasn’t popular...schooled us about drinking that anti-commie kool-aid they was selling. Yeah, he was our Malcolm and our Martin…..’

Otis quotes Norman: ‘The man was using Bloods for cannon fodder. White boys who stayed in college, they’d dodged that shit. They put our poor black asses on the front lines, killing us off like flies…..War’s about money, money is about war. Everytime I walk out my front door I see cops patrolling my neighborhood like it’s some kind of war; I can feel just how much I ain’t worth…..’ You’d be wrong to expect ‘Da Bloods’ to actually feel like the polemic it is. Spike, a spiritual descendent of Berthold Brecht, jumbles politics, history, and theater into a film that acts like a play, here making a flamboyant ride with the jocular, noisy, squabbling, limping compatriots. Lindo’s Paul, the rogue in the MAGA cap, is the depressed, manicky central force speaking directly into the camera at the viewer, harnessing moments of desperate everyman (gaining him buzz for best actor nominations).

It is the busy plotting and sidebars (some being silly but contributing to the daily-life-ness of the messy whole) that allow Lee’s underlying political truths to seep into the brain with ease — fact relief from intense Paul and the noisy thrum. And there’s more, much more that Spike embeds in his today/yesterday Vietnam patchwork including assorted miscreants chasing after the about-to-be-found gold.

There’s double-crossing French businessman, Desroche, (Jean Reno) whom the Bloods hire to launder the golden horde. A group of French volunteers are wandering around in country to defuse landmines under the banner of ‘LAMB: love and mines/bombs’. LAMB’s founder is pale beauty Hedy (Mélanie Thierry), an heiress expiating guilt because her family's rubber plantations had exploited the Vietnamese during France’s colonial occupation of Indochina. Both Thierry and Reno are major stars of French cinema here in supporting roles, a nice touch for us and them.

Along the journey upriver to the Vietnam interior to find Da 5th and gold bars, local Vietnamese stray in and out of frame (‘you Americans killed my brother...my mother, my father’) — those who, like Da group, were also pawns of global power. Not least, Otis reunites with his former lover/sex worker and meets his/their grown daughter (below).

Spike has blended a good ol boys reunion, a noisy heist, a father-son (and other family) melodrama, drug addiction, and matters of morality and conscience into a film so packed with action (including good endings for the players who survive the junket) that it just about gets away with its long running time. Spike couldn’t have planned better than an accidental film debut alongside the largest mass movement at home since the 1960’s, driven by revulsion at the murder of George Floyd. Lee told Yahoo News …”People are fed up ...tired of the debasing, the killing of black bodies.” The throughline is the pain of black men fighting for rights overseas in a war they are losing at home. But today’s search for the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and yesterday’s (commie kool-aid) patriotism end up the same — guns blazing, brothers dead.

Some Notes: 

1. In the following story,from The Atlantic, the screenwriters discuss the evolution of the original script (Oliver Stone to have directed) into the film that matured into one featuring Black vets, directed and co-written by Spike Lee.

2. Spike Lee shares much with Berthold Brecht in temperament and political moxy. Credit to SJ Horton (who has acted in ‘Threepenny Opera’) for the apt Brecht reminder.

3. Watch this lovely rendering of Frederick Douglass’s speech of July 4 recited and commented upon by 5 of his young descendants -- and, in more current news, RIP, John Lewis, image below.

4. Experience the flavor of Da 5 Bloods in the movie trailer. 

A "don't miss" digital, DVD and Blu-ray debut: Spike & Kevin's daring and delightful CHI-RAQ

TrustMovies covered this terrific and surprising movie -- the best film Spike Lee has made in a long, long while -- when it opened in theaters for a limited run early last month. The screenplay, a treasure of smart, sassy rap poetry, is co-authored by Kevin Willmott and Mr. Lee. Now that it's out on Blu-ray, DVD and digital formats, I've seen it twice more, and can attest to its being even better than I formerly thought (my earlier review can be found here).

Yet it has been hugely overlooked by many critics, by the Academy, and certainly by audiences. CHI-RAQ is tremendously entertaining, serving both its source -- Aristophanes' Lysistrata -- and today's heavily multicultural audience supremely well. Given the chance, it will entertain white audiences (at least those non-Trump supporters who possess some intelligence), black audiences, young, old, and those who know the Greek comedies, as well as those who don't. Its theme could not be more timely, and the performances, from the leads to the small supporting roles, are lip-smackingly good. Miss this one at your peril. It will be talked about -- and enjoyed -- for years to come.

From Amazon Studios, it's available now via Amazon on digital streaming, DVD and Blu-ray -- for purchase or rental.

Spike Lee's back in form again with his--and Kevin Willmott's--Lysistrata take-off, CHI-RAQ

To get right to the point, CHI-RAQ is the most successful and entertaining Spike Lee movie to get a theatrical release in, well, decades. This is particularly good news for us fans of Mr. Lee who had pretty much given up on him in the wake of misfires the likes of his Clockers and 25th Hour adaptations or full-out disasters such as Bamboozled, She Hate Me and Miracle at St. Anna. Sure, Chi-Raq is full of those not-so-hot Lee hallmarks (it hammers home its theme from first moment to last, it's too long, and it's repetitive) but it's also so full of Lee's strengths as a filmmaker -- passion, energy and spot-on casting -- that it barrels through one's objections with speed and gusto.

TrustMovies can't claim to know for certain who did what on this film, but I would take an educated guess that Lee's (the director is shown at right) screenwriting collaborator here -- Kevin Willmott of that ace mocku-mentary, C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America -- had a lot to do with how successful Chi-raq turns out to be. First off, the film is written in, well, poetry. Now, before you start thinking "Molière, as translated by Richard Wilbur," let me puncture that balloon. The movie's mostly written as rap. But it's the words only, unaccompanied by the usual crap "beat" that beats this would-be music into mindlessly dead submission. And this is lively, smartly written rap poetry, every bit as profane, dirty and funny as the original play.

Play? As in theater piece? Yes, Chi-Raq is also based loosely (but close enough for jazz) on Aristophanes' Lysistrata -- that's right: the one where the women withhold their sexual favors until the guys stop making war -- and it takes place in today's Chicago, dubbed Chi-Raq (rhymes with Iraq), a city where black-on-black gang violence has reached a level so high that the women folk take matters into their own hands (and other body parts) to stop the carnage.

Chi-Raq is also the name of the movie's non-hero, a rock star/gang man played by Nick Cannon, (two photos up) whose woman, the knock-your-socks-off beautiful and sexy Teyonah Parris (Mad Men's Dawn Chambers), just above, has had enough. So she persuades everyone from her friends (and even some enemies) to the local prostitutes to join her No Peace, No Pussy movement.

The event that sets all this off is the gang-related drive-by shooting that kills an innocent child, the daughter of Irene, played by Jennifer Hudson, who gets a good song to sing (yes, the movie occasionally morphs, Bollywood style, into a musical). In the supporting cast pop up everyone from a strong-willed neighbor (Angela Bassett, above, center) and Chi-Raq's nemesis, Cyclops, essayed by good-to-see-him-in-a-humorous-role-again Wesley Snipes, to the local minister (John Cusack) and a terrific one-man Greek chorus, played by the indispensable Samuel L. Jackson (below).

All these actors know how to handle poetry and make it fall off their lips like dialog. Mr. Cusack's moving and vital sermon (below) is the only lengthy period in the movie -- that I noticed, anyway -- in which the screenplay in not in rap poetry. The sermon works beautifully and angrily (Cusack is at his usual best) because it's the most serious part of the film, and in fact, the very reason for its being.

Lee puts his flamboyance to mostly excellent use here, bringing his passion for this subject to full bloom in both the comedy and tragedy sections (Lysistrata's conquest of the military and the males bemoaning their fate at the local strip club are two of the movie's best comedy scenes). Lee's energy and commitment allow the comic and tragic to meld much better than you might expect. If they don't quite coalesce at all times, there's enough merit in what does work to make the movie as a whole work, too.

Funny, entertaining, moving -- and timely as death -- Chi-Raq is Mr. Lee's most daring and accomplished film in quite some years. From Amazon Studios together with Roadside Attractions, the movie opens tomorrow, Friday, December 4, in major cities all over the country. To learn the theater nearest you, simply click here, then enter your zip and you're all set (if you're near a big city, that is). Otherwise, you can probably bet that the film will hit Amazon's streaming service eventually.

The photo of Mr. Lee (second from top) is by 

Stephen Lovekin, courtesy of Getty Images.