![]() In this context, Da 5 Bloods’ breadth is almost necessary. And Lee is still angry at and discontent with the status quo, being the continued oppression of Black Americans through police brutality, voter suppression and medical neglect. ![]() Lee’s at the height of his powers when bluntly making the case that for as much time as has passed since the Vietnam War’s conclusion, America’s still stubbornly waging the same wars on its own people and, for that matter, the rest of the world. There’s more, of course, “more” being around $17 million in gold bars planted in Vietnamese soil, property of the CIA but reappropriated by the Bloods as reparations for their personal suffering as men fighting a war for a country governed by people who don’t care about their rights. ![]() After opening with a montage of events comprising and figures speaking out against the Vietnam War, referred to predominantly as the American War throughout the rest of the movie, Lee introduces four of the five bloods: Otis (Clarke Peters), Paul (Delroy Lindo), Eddie (Norm Lewis) and Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), bonded Vietnam vets returned to Ho Chi Minh City ostensibly to find and recover the bones of their fallen squad leader, Norman (Chadwick Boseman). As in 2018’s BlacKkKlansman, Lee connects the dots between past and present, linking the struggle for civil rights couched in conscientious objection and protest to contemporary America’s own struggle against state-sanctioned fascism. Glue these truths together with the weathering effects of institutional racism, add myriad references to history-American history, music history, film history-and you get Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, a classically styled Vietnam action picture made in his cinematic vision. The long road to reconciliation, whether with one’s trauma, family or national identity, is never without bumps. The hunt for buried gold neither ends well nor goes off without a hitch. Da 5 Bloods Year: 2020 Director: Spike Lee Starring: Clarke Peters, Delroy Lindo, Norman Lewis, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Chadwick Boseman, Jonathan Majors, Mélanie Thierry, Paul Walter Hauser, Jasper Pääkkönen, Jean Reno, Lê Y Lan, Johnny Trí Nguy?n Rating: R Runtime: 156 minutes In The Hurt Locker, Bigelow makes us understand that perspective in the most visceral way possible, to truly revelatory effect. “War is a drug,” says journalist Chris Hedges in a quote that opens the film. When, in its quiet epilogue, James finds himself immediately bored by suburban life and itches to return to the adrenalized theater of war, after nearly two hours of relentless nerve-wracking tension, we in the audience feel the same sense of stagnation he does. ![]() But perhaps the film’s most noteworthy achievement lies in the way Bigelow uncannily inhabits James’s perspective while also standing outside of it. Beyond its hair-raising action and suspense set pieces, much of the film’s drama is driven by the tensions James’s hot-dog tendencies create between himself and everyone around him. William James (Jeremy Renner), a devil-may-care maverick who not only has a knack for disarming bombs, but loves doing it to a reckless degree. It’s essentially a character study in the guise of an action movie, with Bigelow’s subject Staff Sgt. Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty may have been more ambitious in its step-by-step chronicle of the efforts to find and kill Osama bin Laden, but her preceding War on Terror film, The Hurt Locker, remains the more resonant achievement. The Hurt Locker Year: 2008 Director: Kathryn Bigelow Stars: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty Rating: R Runtime: 130 minutes ![]() We’ve broadened the definition from our list of the Best War Movies of All Time, but we have limited the selections to movies about actual wars (no Star Wars or other imagined conflicts).ġ. There’s no “War Movie” category, so we’ve dug through their catalog to find some classics, some little-seen gems and even one of the best Netflix originals to date. There aren’t a ton of war movies on Netflix, but that doesn’t mean the streaming service doesn’t have some great ones available. ![]()
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