BEFORE: Veronica Ngo carries over from "The Old Guard", and in honor of Clarke Peters' birthday, I'll start watching this film late on April 7, instead of April 8. You might have noticed that right after Easter, my film choices became more racially diverse - no, I'm not trying for a grant, it's somewhat random, based on my linking process, but I do support the trend in making major motion pictures, and organizations such as the Oscars and the Golden Globes less white overall. Movies and the companies that make them and promote them should reflect the audience, which means that Spike Lee should be set for a while. For me personally, I never have time in February to really pay homage to Black History Month, because I'm always caught up in romances. So here at the Movie Year, it looks like Black History Month begins just after Easter, and continues through to Mother's Day. I hope this isn't too presumptuous of me to move it, but I figure that's better in the end than not paying any homage at all.
I'll start with a tribute to Chadwick Boseman, a few of my upcoming political documentaries are going to focus on race, I'm finally going to watch "The Color Purple" and "Malcolm X", plus then there's a film about Harriet Tubman and a 5-film chain with Samuel L. Jackson. I know it's not enough, but I'm doing what I can do.
Speaking of the Oscars, here's a look at tomorrow's TCM line-up, Friday April 9's films from their "31 Days of Oscars" schedule:
6:15 am "Hallelujah" (1929)
6:15 am "Hallelujah" (1929)
8:00 am "The Hanging Tree" (1959)
10:00 am "Hangmen Also Die" (1943)
12:30 pm "A Hard Day's Night" (1964) - SEEN IT
2:00 pm "Harvey" (1950) - SEEN IT
4:00 pm "The Harvey Girls" (1946)
5:45 pm "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" (1968)
8:00 pm "The Heiress" (1949)
10:15 pm "Hell's Angels" (1930)
12:45 am "Henry V" (1944) - SEEN IT
3:15 am "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" (1941)
5:00 am "Here Comes the Navy" (1934)
Just 3 seen out of 12 brings me to 51 seen out of 101, which is unfortunately just 50.4% - I'm slipping for sure. But here's where I tie it all together - "Da 5 Bloods" is nominated for an Oscar this year, for Best Original Score. (They changed the name of this category, but come on...) This might be the first film I'm watching that's currently nominated, I'll have to check on that. (No, it's not, "Onward" is nominated for Best Animated Feature, and "Emma" for Best Costume Design and Best Makeup & Hair. Plus "The One and Only Ivan" got a nom for Visual Effects.) But more nominated films are on the way, like "Soul", "The Trial of the Chicago 7", "Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm", "One Night in Miami", and tomorrow's film.
THE PLOT: Four African-American veterans battle the forces of man and nature when they return to Vietnam seeking the remains of their fallen squad leader and the gold fortune he helped them hide.
AFTER: It's time once again to discuss my ongoing love/hate relationship with Spike Lee...this started back in college, since he attended NYU about 3 or 4 years before I did, and when I was in film school there, the instructors were still raving about him and his college thesis film, "Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop, We Cut Heads". It's not a great film, by any measure, but I guess it showed enough promise that all the professors had a vision of who he would become. To be fair, it sure beat MY thesis film, because I didn't have one - the school required that I submit a proposal for one at the start of my senior year, but since I had enough credits to graduate at the end of my junior year, I just got out a year early, and I skirted around the whole thesis film. Am I proud of this? Yes and no, I'm proud of saving my parents a year's tuition, I'm proud of having no college loans to repay, and I'm proud of getting to work in the industry a year earlier, but I do feel a little bad about skirting the rules, and having no thesis film to show for my efforts. But by that time I'd already realized I wasn't cut out to be a film director, and had turned my sights toward producing and other tasks. Point to Spike Lee, he stuck to his guns, he made a thesis film, and people regarded that film as "good", it's just that I didn't.
I followed his career after that, when I could - "Do the Right Thing" is a very powerful film, but him inserting himself into every movie as a character, and an annoying character at that - well, it takes a certain amount of chutzpah to be a director, and it takes double that to direct a film AND star in it, and triple that to become an "auteur" with a singular style, and a voice and a message. So the guy's got cojones, but still there was always something about the way he made movies that rubbed me the wrong way. I did like "Inside Man", though, and I was really rooting for "BlacKkKlansman". I rated that last a "5", but that may have had a lot to do with the way he complained publicly about losing the Best Picture Oscar to "Green Book". This just isn't DONE with the Oscars, if you or your film is lucky enough to get a nomination, treat that alone as a win, because if you complain about not winning, forget any future nominations, Spike. "Da 5 Bloods" is nominated for an Oscar, but just for Best Original Score, so that's my point.
There ARE a few Spike Lee films out there that I haven't seen - like "Oldboy", "Red Hook Summer", "Chi-Raq" and "Da Sweet Blood of Jesus". I didn't realize "Miracle at St. Anna" was his, too - I may consider adding these at some point in the future, but right now, Jeez, I'm swamped, sorry, Spike. Give me a call, admit that your thesis film wasn't all that great, and I'll add these right to my list. Look, I finally got to those Bergman films, so anything's possible - and I've got "Malcolm X" in my line-up for May. That's the best I can offer right now.
I think the other thing that bothers me is that he's always gotta push the issue, he's always got to make things about race, and he's always got to have people using the "N" word and other racial epithets as part of the film. With all the Asian people saying the "N" word here, and all the African-American characters using derogatory terms for Asians, it feels like Spike hasn't really progressed all that far, in essence he's just re-making those "talk to the camera" moments in "Do the Right Thing", and that was released over 30 years ago! OK, so he's been fighting racism in his own way all this time, but does he HAVE to keep resorting to all the racial epithets? Somehow I don't feel like he's helping, he's just beating the same drum, and it's a confrontational drum. Imagine if your neighbor plays very loud music every night, and it drives you mad, plus keeps you from falling asleep, and then when you knock on his door and complained about the music, instead of offering to turn the music down, he just keeps asserting his right to play music loudly, while claiming that YOU don't have the right to do the same, and he asks YOU to be more quiet. That, to me, is what Spike Lee gets away with.
But let me try to narrow the focus down to "Da 5 Bloods" (and the fact that he uses "Da" instead of "The" in the title also pisses me off, but for a different reason). The film is about 4 Vietnam veterans who return to find the body of their commanding officer, and a buried cache of gold bars. The first part seems quite noble, the second of course seems more mercenary. Yes, of course, their mission can be both things, but also, umm, which one is it? You hear from time to time about people looking for a lost comrade's body in Vietnam, and the first thing I usually think is, "Really? Wasn't that like 50 years ago? What makes you think you're going to be able to find a BODY after all this time?" Factor in decomposition, jungle predators and the simple fact that the body hasn't been found YET, and the whole prospect sounds a bit far-fetched. OK, but you never know, and maybe it's more about the people who are still living and looking for some closure, instead of finding remains that you can say definitely belong to THAT individual.
But come on, it's really about the gold, isn't it? If you predicted that this film would eventually follow the essential plot points of "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", you'd be right. One Vietnamese soldier even quotes the line about not needing any "stinking badges", just to drive that point home and be blatantly obvious about it. These 4 men - no, wait, now it's 5 men - end up having very different ideas on what should be done with the money, if they can locate it. (If they find the body, the plan is simple, their commander, "Stormin' Norman" is already approved for burial in Arlington Cemetery.) But should they just split the money, donate the money to a good cause, use it for reparations, or something else?
Well, without giving too much away, things get more complicated, as they tend to do. Other people get involved, the soldiers' contact in Vietnam puts them in touch with a guide, and a fence for the gold, but then there are the Vietnamese soldiers, and also three people who work with an organization that locates and disarms land mines. By the end, there are so many interested parties that the film started to remind me (just a bit) of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" - only without the comedic elements.
There are a number of salient points to be made, I'll admit - such as black men serving in World War 2, then Korea, then Vietnam, and being told each time that it was to their benefit to do so, that they'd be given their due. But then how come during the Vietnam Era African-Americans made up 11% of the U.S. population, but over 23% of the combat troops and nearly 25% of the causalties? That sure seems unfair - but is it enough to justify repatriating a big box of gold bars? That, of course, is the argument at hand. It's clear that more white American were able to get deferments, avoiding the draft by entering college, serving in ROTC or the National Guard, or just by being well-connected to those in charge. Donald Trump here is called "President Bone Spurs", which is dead on - remember this is how he avoided serving, but years later he couldn't even remember which foot the fake bone spurs were allegedly in? Another point for Spike Lee - hey, maybe Spike and I can finally agree on something, we both hate Trump.
So why is there one black main character here who supports Trump? What purpose does that serve? His comrades joke about that one speech where Trump called out his "African-American", as if he only had one black supporter. I guess we all have to acknowledge that Trump did manage to appeal to SOME black Americans, though I can't imagine why. There are Black Republicans, though they may be as rare as albino elephants - ah, but the black Trump supporter here is not only old and stubborn, but also going through dementia or Alzheimer's, so perhaps that's the point being made. Only a black man losing his mind would support Trump, OK, that tracks. Yet another point for Spike.
There's a technique used here, though, that I'm not sure I agree with. During the flashbacks (which were shot or are just screened in a different ratio - I understand why, because it becomes part of the process through which we identify the flashback material) the younger soldier characters are played by the same actors, and they still look just as old, even when they're young. This doesn't really work for me, even taking into account that memories are subjective, and the flashbacks are seen through the P.O.V. of the older men, so its OK that they look old when they're supposed to be young. Umm, no, point of order, this is not really OK. Not when there are three fairly easy standard work-arounds, namely 1) use make-up and hair coloring to make the same actors look younger or 2) use special effects to make them look younger, like they did with Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall in "Coming 2 America", or 3) cast different actors who look very much like the young versions of the older actors. Any or all of these would have worked better than doing nothing, which seems a lot like Spike shrugging his shoulders and saying, "Eh, it's good enough, maybe nobody will notice. And even if they do, who cares, I'm Spike Lee and I can do whatever I want."
The film is a bit too long, at 2 1/2 hours - I'm guessing some trimming could have been made somewhere. And the story works, as long as you take into account that Spike Lee's going to be beating on that same drum that he always beats on, and he also does so very loudly, and he doesn't care if you're trying to get to sleep next door.
Also starring Delroy Lindo (last seen in "The Core"), Jonathan Majors (last seen in "Captive State"), Clarke Peters (last seen in "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"), Norm Lewis (last heard in "Just Mercy"), Isiah Whitlock Jr. (last seen in "CHIPS"), Chadwick Boseman (last seen in "Marshall"), Johnny Tri Nguyen, Melanie Thierry (last seen in "The Zero Theorem"), Paul Walter Hauser (last seen in "Richard Jewell"), Jasper Paakkonen (last seen in "BlacKkKlansman"), Jean Reno (last seen in "Flyboys"), Le Y Lan, Nguyen Ngoc Lam, Sandy Huong Pham, Hawk Newsome, with archive footage of Muhammad Ali (last seen in "Hitsville: The Making of Motown"), Neil Armstrong (last seen in "Apollo 11"), Harry Belafonte (also last seen in "BlacKkKlansman"), Stokely Carmichael, Angela Davis, Aretha Franklin (last seen in "Muscle Shoals"), Lyndon Johnson (last seen in "Steal This Movie"), Martin Luther King (ditto),, Richard Nixon (ditto), Malcolm X (last seen in "13th"), Ho Chi Minh, Edwin Moses, Bobby Seale (last seen in "The U.S. vis John Lennon"), Donald Trump (last seen in "Fyre Fraud").
RATING: 5 out of 10 PTSD triggers
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