Warriors reunite
Spike Lee’s ‘Bloods’ revisits horrors of Vietnam
For Spike Lee, like millions around the globe, the pandemic has altered his personal landscape in many ways.
At 63 and African American, he ranks in two high-risk COVID-19 groups, which is why he remains happily self-quarantined with his family on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
The virus shut down last month’s Cannes Film Festival, where Lee was to have led the competitive jury. That’s now postponed until 2021.
It’s also scratched the theatrical release of “Da 5 Bloods,” his postVietnam war film, which streams Friday on Netflix and stars Lee regular Delroy Lindo, Chadwick Boseman (“Black Panther”), Jean Reno (“The DaVinci Code,” “Ronin”) and Paul Walter Hauser (“BlacKkKlansman,” “Richard Jewell”).
The adventure recounts a 40years-later return of four black Vietnam War veterans (Lindo, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Clarke Peters and Norm Lewis). “Bloods” is how the former soldiers affectionately refer to each other.
Their mission: Recover the corpse of their fallen squad leader Stormin’ Norman (Boseman) — and the loot he buried.
Lee has reportedly blended elements from several Hollywood classics in this study of war’s enduringly destructive powers. They range from “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” 1948’s indelible portrait of greed’s destructive power, to David Lean’s monumental look at the insanity of war with “The Bridge on the River Kwai” (’57) and Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” (’79), his adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.”
As with every Lee project, history and politics are essential elements. Lindo is a pro-Trump booster in a red “Make America Great Again” hat. Lee knows a sizable percentage of African Americans did vote for the current White House occupant.
It wasn’t an easy choice. Lee is one of the president’s most vocal critics and Lindo told a reporter, “Trump is anathema to everything I believe in. I tried to talk Spike out of it.”
“Bloods” follows Lee’s “BlacKk
Klansman,” which won him his first competitive Oscar (he has an honorary Academy Award from 2015) for Best Adapted Screenplay, which he shared with three others.
Just as Lee’s conclusion in the ’60s-set “BlacKkKlansman” was actual video footage of the racist violence in 2017 Charlottesville, Va., “Bloods” presents vintage footage. There’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali (who was stripped of his heavyweight title for opposing the Vietnam War and refusing induction), as well as ’60s activists Malcolm X and Angela Davis.
Lee hasn’t spent the quarantine mourning what might have been. In early June he released a short film “3 Brothers” protesting George Floyd’s murder.
He equates Floyd’s treatment by the cops with Eric Garner, who died similarly, and Radio Raheem, the character in Lee’s 1989 “Do the Right Thing” who also died being choked by the police.
Lee’s short opens with a question and a challenge: “Will History Stop Repeating Itself.”