‘Da 5 Bloods’ Film Review: Spike Lee’s Vietnam Epic Finds an Apocalypse Then and Now

The way Lee tells the story, with asides and history lessons and cutaways and tricks that have become the director’s singular cinematic vocabulary, make it a must-see in these stormy times

Da 5 Bloods
David Lee / Netflix

Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods,” his first feature since the Oscar-winning “BlacKkKlansman,” is an angry, incendiary and extraordinarily timely film that surveys decades of racism in the United States with a sharp, unflinching eye.

And “Da 5 Bloods” is also an adventure story about a quartet of Vietnam vets who return to the country where they once fought to find the remains of their squad leader, and also dig up some buried treasure that they left behind in 1968.

One of those things is significantly more involving than the other, and you probably don’t need much help figuring out which one it is.

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