When Spike Lee first unleashed Da 5 Bloods in 2020, it was immediately clear he was swinging for everything: grief, rage, history, nostalgia, even surreal fantasy. And while that brawny ambition is admirable, the film’s wild tonal shifts—zooming from emotional soul-searching to pulpy treasure‑hunt action to fever‑dream symbolism—often unsettle more than they resonate.
Heart of Brotherhood
At its core, Da 5 Bloods is about four Black Vietnam veterans returning to the jungle to unearth not just buried gold but buried trauma. Delroy Lindo’s Paul anchors the story with a raw, riveting performance: his grief over Stormin’ Norman (Chadwick Boseman) is palpable, visceral. When the movie slows down—letting us sit with Paul’s guilt and emotional unraveling—it truly shines. The flashbacks to their bond and Norman’s charisma provide real, layered depth. These are the moments of genuine emotional truth, where the movie aligns and the tone stabilizes.
When It Takes Flight—and Stumbles
But Lee keeps yanking us out of that emotional center. With sudden genre shifts, the film backdrop changes: one minute it’s an elegiac character piece, the next a booby-trap thriller, then a surreal hallucination. A standout scene—Paul’s fever dream involving towering explosions reminiscent of 9/11—is stunningly symbolic, but in context it jolts the narrative off its moorings. Such bold visual choices can be powerful, but here they often feel untethered, collateral damage from Lee’s scattergun approach to tone.
Humor That Bounces Off
Da 5 Bloods also layers in satirical humor: Otis narrates in a docu-vet style, Melvin supplies comic relief. Humor isn’t inherently wrong—in fact, it can punctuate and humanize—but here it lands unevenly. Light-hearted quips during harrowing jungle escapes undercut the pain. One moment we’re witnessing viscerally disturbing consequences of war, the next we’re watching a playful banter fight on a boat. It isn’t a tonal jolt so much as tonal whiplash—and it weakens the emotional stakes.
Soundtrack and Score: Mixed Impact
Terence Blanchard’s score ranges from intimate mournful themes to bombastic orchestral stabs that often coincide with action setpieces. During the quiet moments—when the film leans into memory and mourning—the music is powerful, haunting. But when it blares over improbable firefights, it feels overbearing. It isn’t that the music betrays the narrative per se, but that it highlights how the movie can’t settle on a consistent tone.
Too Much, Too Fast
Lee’s heart is clearly in the right place: this is an unapologetic tribute to Black soldiers—OTs, Tuskegee pilots, the complexity of history. Some scenes are achingly genuine: Otis recalling Norman’s final speech, flashbacks of their brotherhood in ’68, nods to neglected veterans. They’re the moments that linger. But the film also drags along subplots—mercenary betrayals, drug-induced visions, chase scenes, heists—that eventually weigh it down. It’s as if Lee couldn’t decide if he wanted a war memoir, a caper thriller, or an allegorical fantasy, so he threw everything into the mix.
Where It Wins
There’s no question: Delroy Lindo’s Paul is the film’s emotional backbone. Chadwick Boseman’s Norman—though present mostly via flashbacks—feels like a spiritual compass for the veterans. Lee’s thematic intention, connecting Vietnam to modern conflict, veteran neglect to contemporary awareness, is thoughtful and necessary.
Where It Fails
The film’s greatest flaw is its identity crisis. It oscillates wildly between tones, making it hard to emotionally invest or even know what you’re watching. The action sequences feel too gamified, and the surreal imagery too abrupt. And the humor, when inserted in the wrong moments, undercuts the emotional foundation Paul’s grief builds.
Final Score
Da 5 Bloods is a high‑ambition film that largely succeeds in key emotional beats, thanks to Lindo’s powerhouse performance and Lee’s commitment to telling a Black veterans’ story. But when ambition leads to tone whiplash, coherence suffers. It’s a film that can feel profound one moment and passé the next, leaving you exhilarated, exhausted—and occasionally exasperated.
I’m giving it 3 out of 5. When it focuses on grief, brotherhood, and carrying the legacy of Norman, it’s deeply moving. But its genre-leaping and tonal shifts hold it back from being the steadier, more haunting work it could have been.