With all that is going on in the United States right now, the works of Spike Lee are more important than ever. The Academy Award winning director has long been one of the strongest voices in the African American community, with his movies representing those that are often overlooked in the industry.
Films such as He Got Game, BlacKkKlansman, and Malcolm X received massive critical acclaim, with Lee bringing a new title to Netflix next week.
Da 5 Bloods follows the story of four African American men, all of whom are veterans of the war in Vietnam.
The quartet return to the country years after the war has ended in order to search for the body of their fallen colleague, as well as treasure that they buried during the conflict. However, coming back to Vietnam dredges up all the emotions associated with that brutal war.
The movie will be added to Netflix on Friday June 12th, and you can watch the trailer in full below:
Netflix describes the movie as:
From Academy Award Winner Spike Lee comes a New Joint: the story of four African-American Vets — Paul (Delroy Lindo), Otis (Clarke Peters), Eddie (Norm Lewis), and Melvin (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) — who return to Vietnam.
Searching for the remains of their fallen Squad Leader (Chadwick Boseman) and the promise of buried treasure, our heroes, joined by Paul's concerned son (Jonathan Majors), battle forces of Man and Nature — while confronted by the lasting ravages of The Immorality of The Vietnam War.
BlacKkKlansmann co-writer Kevin Willmott, who helped Lee on this project, told the LA Times that no other movie had really explored in-depth the African American experience during the Vietnam War.
There really hadn’t been a major film about the black Vietnam experience, one that really explored what black veterans had gone through.
The black soldier’s story has been that he’s fighting for rights that he doesn’t have himself, with the notion that your participation and your patriotism will somehow earn you equality back home.
What made Vietnam so different was that there’s an actual black revolution going on back home and people are dying in that revolution while you’re in the jungles fighting another struggle.
This should make for a fascinating watch.
