Da 5 Bloods: Frères de sang

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.

There are enjoyable aspects to this movie, certainly... but as a whole, it feels disoriented. And I'd place the blame (and the credit) on director Spike Lee's directorial choices.

An aspect of his directorial style I loved was the 4th wall breaking monologues as delivered by actor Delroy Lindo in the final act of the movie... It was a creative choice that I felt added more weight to the character. But then there are other aspects of Lee's style that just doesn't do it for me... And as was in his last feature BlacKkKlansman... he has a tendency to be overbearingly loud about his messaging when in fact he doesn't have to be. The historical contexts added into the movie (as displayed through a collection of images interrupting the flow of the movie) feel unnecessarily preachy in a script that has very little to do with any of it.

Leaving all that aside, there's still a little charm left in the movie, courtesy of the chemistry the lead actors share on screen. And they all do a great job with the material handed to them, although I felt like the script they were working with could have been a little more accommodating to their talents. The script... although follows a very interesting premise, fails to meaningfully add any depth to it all.

Overall, I'm not saying I hated it, but it's a movie that's very difficult to love. I have nothing but respect for Spike Lee as a director, but this just doesn't do it for me.

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.

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.

Nothing about "Da 5 Bloods" works. Nothing. In fact, it's so arrogant in it's premise and execution that it almost pulls off a sort of B-Movie charm. Not a complement. Here's a bunch of great actors with plenty of scenery to chew up and a script that assumes a certain weight that it can't quite deliver. What's left is a laughably self-serious movie that looks like garbage, is filled with leaden emotions, and betrays a couple of veterans actors slumming for the privilege of working with the ultimate hot/cold writer-director.

When Lee is on, he's one of the best filmmakers of the last fifty years - full of substance and style. But when he's off, you get overheated tripe like "Bloods" - a film that manages to be hilarious when it's supposed to be thinking, and deadly somber when we're supposed to be winking. Memorable only as a great misfire for everyone involved.