Destacamento Blood

Whoa....this was a hell of a ride! Now, if you are expecting Da 5 Bloods to be a movie in the sense of a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, it might not work for you. I am not sure myself it worked for me but I didn't feel like I could just ignore it either. This is like a pile of political, emotional and historical statements not necessarily linked in one single bundle. At times it ends up being a Tarantino-like mess, but with relevance. It is surely timely, it is heavily politically loaded, it is emotional and intense, angered but also ironical and lighthearted at moments. Maybe not to be judged, let alone rated, but just to be absorbed.

I really wanted to like this movie, but the writing was all over the place and the pace was so boring. This is not a classic war movie, it's just a bunch of guys complaining how they got treated badly by the man. Just boring.

Seems Spike Lee has caught the George Lucas disease regarding pruning back an out-of-control bush of a movie. You have a couple of main themes in this very preachy but often action-packed movie about Vietnam War Vets trying to reconcile their pasts and improve their lots in life. But there's like three-movies-in-one here and Spike Lee seems to have fired the editor who should have removed 30 minutes of drag from this often dramatic effort. Interesting but overly long, sentimental in bizarre places, preachy nearly beyond redemption.

Looks like Spike got lazy and called this one in. Daughter conceived 50 years ago looks like a 25 year old, the mother looks 40, not 65. Gold got washed away in a mudslide but went uphill? Plot mimics Treasure of Sierra Madre, gold drives men to insanity due to selfishness. Hard to follow the flashbacks because the younger men looked like the older men. Would have been a 10 if final editing was not a rush job.

Much as I admire Spike Lee's talent and audacity, this film just didn't work for me. Too many preposterous plot points while the motivations (of everyone, it seemed) were never clear. The whole thing was just confusing.

And yes, disjointed.