'Da 5 Bloods' is Spike Lee's most ambitious epic since 'Malcolm X'

The lead characters in Da 5 Bloods are frequently spouting off about history -- both their own personal ones and that of the nation they fought for in Vietnam. They are clearly not removed from their trauma, even almost 50 years later, and through a somewhat improbable quest for some buried treasure they have reinserted themselves into the war that shaped them for better or worse.

This is the center of one of Spike Lee's most fascinating and fantastic efforts to date. This proves his recent success with BlackKklansman was no fluke. Much of not all if I'm not mistaken of that film's writing team has returned here and they have only topped that return to form.

It's clear Lee is a director who can get excessive without some other forces mitigating him -- and yet this film is not without any of the director's eccentric touchstones -- and here everything works. This is a movie where both the villain and hero don a MAGA hat and it feels completely warranted and natural.

Speaking of natural -- my God I have to talk about Delroy Lindo's performance here. This was a guy who seemed suddenly ubiquitous in the 1990s. Spike Lee broke him into the mainstream with strong and memorable supporting turns in Malcolm X and Crooklyn, then Lindo got even more exposure in films like Get Shorty, Ransom and Gone in Sixty Seconds. He was always great and he never really went away, but we never got to see him fully bloom into stardom.

In this role, apparently crafted just for him, Lindo has found that part that should make him a star if not a lock Oscar contender. His Paul is one of Spike Lee's most complex creations. A bitter, PTSD-suffering veteran and a Trump supporter to boot, Lindo's characterization recalls Bogart's in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre with a little bit of some of De Niro's classic antiheroes mixed in for good measure.

He is so effortlessly captivating here -- and he is frequently tasked with holding the frame with his unconventionally handsome face, which hasn't seemed to have aged a day since 1996. His character can be cruel and vindictive, but is also full of decades worth of incalculable pain and regret. I had no idea what he was going to do next and where is is headed -- I love characters/performances like that.

Delroy Lindo, Best Actor 2020

He is a tour de force in a cast full of great performers -- and they manage to all stand out as fully formed characters in the midst of gorgeous scenery (it may be Lee's best photographed film besides Do the Right Thing), kinetic battle scenes and a narrative that brilliantly weaves black historical nonfiction from the civil rights era with the narrative conflict taking place in the Vietnam of today.

This is easily Lee's most ambitious movie since Malcolm X, and that movie had Alex Haley's masterpiece of an autobiography to fall back on. In Da 5 Bloods, Lee is really out on a tightrope, taking some big swings, and thankfully, he connects.

And what a time for Lee to have a triumph like this. With coronavirus not just killing over 100,000 Americans (thanks, Trump) but also effectively the movie industry for the past four months. We've had one above average popcorn flick (The Invisible Man) and little else to latch onto in 2020, and here comes Da 5 Bloods, feeling likely a timely, provocative grenade being tossed into the marketplace.

Perhaps it was never intended to play in theaters nationwide (it was produced by Netflix after all) but it certainly would have worked -- there is a nail-biting land mine sequence that is as thrilling as anything Lee has ever shot -- but in this format it can be savored and revisited repeatedly by viewers who have been dying to see a new film worth talking about.

Da 5 Bloods has laid down a marker and a lot of other movies this year will be playing catch up. It's a deceptively sophisticated film and although it is at least partially about America's sins in the past, its not without something to say about it's present and future too. Which feels like a good way to start going back to the movies in 2020.