Spike Lee is a great director. Some of his movies like 'Do the Right Thing', 'Get on the Bus' or 'Chi-Raq' are true masterpieces.
This is not one of them.
Lee always has been a moralist, which is to a large extent an understandable stance for an African-American director preoccupied with slavery and the black cause in the United States, and often this stance is not detrimental to Lee's overall artistic conception. Still, I believe it is fair to say that there must be a point when the urgent moral message 1) becomes just too cheap or redundant to not play the viewer for a fool and 2) becomes the altar reasonable storytelling and character development can be sacrificed on. This is unfortunately the case in his latest work 'Da 5 Bloods'.
One the one hand, the movies tries to be a quasi-documentary about the crucial role of black soldiers in the Vietnam war. While this might by an important one, this is certainly not a new piece of history, i.e. a piece of history that you wouldn't know if you just knew a little bit about the war vis-à-vis e.g. the well known story of Muhammed Alis conscientious objection.
On the other hand, there is the drama of four retired soldiers trying to recover a sack of gold and the body of their lost comrade from the Vietnam jungle. This is an interesting idea for a plot. However, the end result is miserable. There's not a single character in this film that disposes of non-stereotypical traits and thus rises above the level of types and transportation vehicles for moral or political sound bites. Most of the dialogues seem artifical and inanimate. The further the story advances, the more frequently it edges ludicrously on farce. First, I thought this might have been a simple lapse by the director. But it might've been the director's intention to take this humorous turn. In either case, this artistic choice is for me as intelligible as a slapstick comedy about Auschwitz - and as unfunny.
The fact remains, as with Lee's previous, likewise astronomically overrated movie 'Blackkklansman' that I come not even close to fathom how many critics arrived at their assessment of this film. Has this something to do with the politically difficult times (wink, wink, wink, wink!) we live in? If it does, I can only say that in my opinion the importance of movements like Black Lives Matter and social justice in America are no good justification to confabulate reasons for a chorus of praise for every single movie made by a black filmmaker
This is not one of them.
Lee always has been a moralist, which is to a large extent an understandable stance for an African-American director preoccupied with slavery and the black cause in the United States, and often this stance is not detrimental to Lee's overall artistic conception. Still, I believe it is fair to say that there must be a point when the urgent moral message 1) becomes just too cheap or redundant to not play the viewer for a fool and 2) becomes the altar reasonable storytelling and character development can be sacrificed on. This is unfortunately the case in his latest work 'Da 5 Bloods'.
One the one hand, the movies tries to be a quasi-documentary about the crucial role of black soldiers in the Vietnam war. While this might by an important one, this is certainly not a new piece of history, i.e. a piece of history that you wouldn't know if you just knew a little bit about the war vis-à-vis e.g. the well known story of Muhammed Alis conscientious objection.
On the other hand, there is the drama of four retired soldiers trying to recover a sack of gold and the body of their lost comrade from the Vietnam jungle. This is an interesting idea for a plot. However, the end result is miserable. There's not a single character in this film that disposes of non-stereotypical traits and thus rises above the level of types and transportation vehicles for moral or political sound bites. Most of the dialogues seem artifical and inanimate. The further the story advances, the more frequently it edges ludicrously on farce. First, I thought this might have been a simple lapse by the director. But it might've been the director's intention to take this humorous turn. In either case, this artistic choice is for me as intelligible as a slapstick comedy about Auschwitz - and as unfunny.
The fact remains, as with Lee's previous, likewise astronomically overrated movie 'Blackkklansman' that I come not even close to fathom how many critics arrived at their assessment of this film. Has this something to do with the politically difficult times (wink, wink, wink, wink!) we live in? If it does, I can only say that in my opinion the importance of movements like Black Lives Matter and social justice in America are no good justification to confabulate reasons for a chorus of praise for every single movie made by a black filmmaker