Da 5 Bloods May 2026

Da 5 Bloods is ultimately about the cyclical nature of violence. The Vietnam War never ended for these men; it simply changed location. The jungles of Vietnam become a mirror for the streets of America, where Black bodies continue to be disposable. The film was released in the summer of 2020, amidst the global protests following the murder of George Floyd. That timing was accidental, but it was prophetic. The film’s final images—of Paul’s sacrifice, of the Bloods finally laying Norman to rest, and of the ever-present, unforgiving jungle—suggest that true peace is impossible without truth, restitution, and a reckoning with history.

Spike Lee, as always, refuses a linear, comfortable style. The film jumps between aspect ratios (widescreen for the past, boxy for the present, 16mm for the war flashbacks), time periods, and musical genres. The soundtrack is a living entity, mixing Marvin Gaye’s soulful pleas ("What’s Going On") with the bombastic orchestral score of a classic adventure film.

In the sprawling, ambitious canvas of Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods (2020), the Vietnam War is not a relic of the past. It is a living, breathing wound that continues to fester, bleed, and demand payment. The film follows four aging Vietnam War veterans—Paul (Delroy Lindo), Otis (Clarke Peters), Eddie (Norm Lewis), and Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr.)—who return to the jungles of modern-day Vietnam. Their mission is twofold: to recover the remains of their fallen squad leader, the revered "Stormin'" Norman (Chadwick Boseman), and to find a buried cache of CIA gold they discovered decades earlier.

The heart and soul of the film is Paul, played with volcanic, tragic intensity by Delroy Lindo. Paul is a MAGA-hat-wearing, paranoid, and deeply traumatized veteran. He is not a hero; he is a broken man consumed by guilt and rage. Lee uses a daring, Brechtian device: in moments of extreme stress, Paul hallucinates a younger version of himself, and he delivers soliloquies directly to the camera, breaking the fourth wall.

Paul represents the unprocessed poison of the war. He suffers from PTSD, survivor’s guilt, and a deep-seated fury at being abandoned by his country. His political anger is misdirected—he supports the same system that sacrificed him—but his pain is achingly real. As the group treks deeper into the jungle, the gold (a literal and metaphorical treasure) corrupts their brotherhood, and Paul’s psyche unravels. His final, staggering walk into the jungle—a reverse "walk to freedom"—is a modern masterpiece of cinematic grief, a man finally surrendering to the ghosts he has carried for half a century.