Da Five Bloods

 In "Da Five Bloods", now streaming on Netflix, four men who fought in the Vietnam War return to claim their commanding officer's remains. 

Their other reason for returning to Vietnam is to retrieve a cache of gold bars that they hid during the war. 

The four men return to Vietnam, and make an arrangement with a distribution official to smuggle the gold out of the country. However, nothing is as it seems. Once the men retrieve the gold,  it becomes clear that they all won't make it out alive. 

This film was made by Spike Lee, who is brilliant at weaving historic footage into his movies, to immerse the audience into the place and time of the story. The first three minutes of the film contains footage from the Vietnam War era, and is exceedingly graphic. Once the men find the gold, the war turns into a war film, with all of the violence of war. Not for the squeamish by any means.

The message of the film is a morality play, mirroring the systemic white supremacy in America: "the deck is stacked against you, don't even try to change it."

The film stars the late Chadwick Boseman; I watched this film the weekend after his passing. Boseman played the commanding officer whose body the four men were coming to claim. His story is told in flashback scenes, which was truly chilling, given that he had just passed away.

Not my favorite Spike Lee film. If you like war movies and blood and guts and gore, this is the film for you. Three stars.