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Four Vietnam vets reunite in a search for their fallen comrade – and some gold bullion – in Lee’s inventive, action-packed but disjointed all-star adventure
Last year, Spike Lee won his first competitive Academy Award as co-writer of BlacKkKlansman, a stranger-than-fiction tale of an African-American cop infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan in the early 70s. That Lee should have achieved this victory in the same year that Do the Right Thing celebrated its 30th anniversary seemed significant, proving that this reliably provocative film-maker, now in his 60s, still had his finger on the pulse of modern America. 
Having addressed the role of African American soldiers in the second world war in Miracle at St Anna, Lee turns to Vietnam for his latest, which opens on Netflix amid a period of enormous turmoil. Boasting an all-star cast including Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters and Chadwick Boseman, Da 5 Bloods follows a group of Vietnam vets who return to the country in which they fought “the American war”. Officially, they are there to locate and recover the remains of their fallen squad leader “Stormin’ Norman” (Boseman), a warrior, teacher and mentor (“our Malcolm and our Martin”). But they’re also on the trail of gold – a stash of bullion that they found and buried all those years ago. Continue reading...