Dir: Spike Lee (15 155 mins)
Always a provocateur, Spike Lee’s latest joint is a timely if uneven examination of the cost of the Vietnam war seen through the prism of four black soldiers returning to their battleground.
A quartet of fantastic actors embody the veterans, out to repatriate the body of their fallen comrade Stormin’Norman, played in flashback by Black Panther’s Chadwick Boseman, but it turns out there is also some buried gold to be reclaimed too.
Delroy Lindo is excellent as Paul, a disaffected vet whose grip on reality loosens the deeper they go into the jungle, a Trump supporter with PTSD, well aware of the exploitation of himself and other black soldiers fighting a war they had no reason to fight whilst Martin Luther King was assassinated back home.
Clarke Peters’ Otis is the calm voice of reason, who finds out that he may have had a child with a Vietnamese lover, Isiah Whitlock Jnr’s Melvin is a goodhearted keeper of the peace, prone to drinking and Norm Lewis’ Eddie is apparently rich and blessed, but his reality is far from it. Also along for the ride is Lindo’s estranged son David played by Jonathan Majors, desperate to win his father’s approval and reconnect with him in some way.
Lee creates a likeable frisson between them all as they head into a heart of darkness, a poster for Apocalypse Now even forms a backdrop for a nightclub in which they dance a night away. There’s a coincidental run in with land mine clearing Melanie Thierry, Paul Michael Hauser and Jasper Paakkonen, meaning that some sort of landmine incident will follow, which it gorily does as the band of bloods find themselves up against themselves, double crosses and others interested in their gold bullion.
Initially engaging, the film does tend to meander at points, prolonged monologues from a broken Lindo, shifts in tone and emotional payoffs for characters not hitting home quite as hard as they should but all set to Terence Blanchard’s overtly beautiful score. The flashbacks play with screen ratio, with Boseman’s youthful Norman in theatrical contrast with the rest of his elder compatriots, no digital de-ageing here, save for one shot, but it works.
Lee packs powerful fact, cut aways and Martin Luther King speeches within the action, creating an urgent political treatise, painfully relevant in the here and now.
Although it may flag at points and some tonal shifts feel forced this is still Lee firing on most cylinders.
***
Streaming on Netflix now
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