The new Netflix offering Da 5 Bloods is set in Southeast Asia and operates in two timelines: the early 1970s and almost right now. Director Spike Lee shot it months before the covid-19 pandemic and George Floyd became inescapable words from our vocabulary, yet it seems to be in conversation with our current locked-down and polarized American moment.
According to Kevin Willmott, who wrote the script with Lee, Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo, blurring the past and the present has been standard operating procedure.
In the films Willmott and Lee have written together, Chi-Raq explores gang violence in Chicago by adapting the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes' comedy Lysistrata, and BlacKkKlansman incorporates footage of the Charlottesville riots while recounting a bizarre true story about how black cop Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in 1970s Colorado Springs.
In Da 5 Bloods, a quartet of Vietnam War veterans (Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis and Isiah Whitlock Jr.) return to the country so they can send the remains of a fallen comrade (Chadwick Boseman, Black Panther) back to the States.
They're also eager to see if a cache of gold bricks intended for U.S. allies is still buried with him as well.
The movie features Lee's acerbic humor and nail-biting battle scenes while also addressing how some of the concerns that bedeviled the combatants haven't gone away.
"One of the things that Spike is always interested in is that if he wants to make a film about history, he wants to make it very present today," Willmott says by phone from Lawrence, Kan. "He doesn't want it to play looking back so much as what is now. So, we're always looking for ways to take the past and make it very present today. That's something we both have in common."
A clear sign that the Vietnam War has led to surprising outcomes is a scene where the film's heroes walk across a street revealing that in the aftermath of the war, Ho Chi Minh City now offers many places where diners can enjoy McDonald's and KFC. It's as if corporate eateries have conquered the land in a way that Agent Orange couldn't.
"That was something that's been a pet peeve of mine for some time. In the '90s when they started showing current Vietnam on news reports, and you saw all the fast food places. It had become apparent that that's what took over. That kind of corporate life, you could say that's the opiate of the people because that has a huge effect wherever it goes (laughs). It was just a great opportunity to expose that in Da 5 Bloods," Willmott says.
Observations like this help Willmott and Lee juggle serious social commentary with amusing banter and realistic carnage. Both are devout classic movie buffs and make no apologies for loving The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Apocalypse Now, and both frequently cite Billy Wilder, who was a master at juggling sentiment and cynicism.
"Spike and I share, and we don't really talk about it much, that kind of changing of tone. All of that comes natural to us, and I think it becomes natural because to be funny, we have to be serious," Willmott says. "That's where your humor kind of comes from. It blends those two worlds. To be honest, African-American humor has always been that style. Jewish humor does that, too. You're always having to make fun of your situation."
The film also features Delroy Lindo's Paul, who like Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) in John Ford's The Searchers, is a mean-spirited man who's frequently more contemptible than his Comanche antagonists (they don't shoot out the eyes of their dead enemies). When Paul lashes out at his son (Jonathan Majors) or disrespects others along the way, Willmott says it took a special balance to make viewers continue with Paul's journey.
"How we designed it is walking that really thin line of a guy who's -- as he says in the film -- broken. Because he's broken, he's got a lot of grievances, and that's ultimately why he's a Trump supporter because Trump supporters are about grievances, and they feel like they got the wrong end of the stick. That's kind of what Trump sells more than anything," Willmott says.
"Paul feels like he has the wrong end of the stick, and he has. "Unfortunately, his response has made it worse. He won't get counseling, and he won't talk to others, and he blames immigrants. He blames anybody who has tried to help in his life. Delroy does such a good job of bringing humanity in the middle of all that. You end up loving him one moment and hating him the next. He loves his kid, but he tortures his kid. Men like Paul are not bad people, but they often do bad things."
Hard Lessons
Lee and Willmott also teach film, Lee at New York University and Willmott at the University of Kansas. In some ways, it's not surprising they incorporated a dramatic shot from Gone With the Wind in BlacKkKlansman.
As the Stars and Bars flies about ruined Atlanta, the two acknowledge the power of director Victor Fleming's images and the danger they can pose to understanding what actually happened during the Civil War. Willmott teaches the film in his classes and brings up how Scarlett O'Hara's admirable courage accompanies a depiction of the rise of the KKK and a disturbingly sanguine attitude toward slavery.
Author Margaret Mitchell created a heroine for the ages but placed her in a misleading fantasy about 19th-century Georgia.
"When I saw that as a kid, I just had to tune out the black people in the film. It's the same way Native Americans had to do the same thing with John Wayne movies. You have to see yourself as John Wayne. You have to see yourself as Rhett Butler. You're not one of the slaves. You're not one of the Indians getting shot off the horse. As the Civil Rights movement taught us that being black was something you're not ashamed of but you're proud of, and the images started to follow that," he recalls.
"I don't think Gone With the Wind should be censored, but it should have a warning on it. People don't know the history and get caught up in the romance of it. It makes the images of slavery look palatable, and if you saw this as an example of the Civil War, you'd never know slavery even existed."
To counteract this misrepresentation, Lee and Willmott sprinkle Da Five Bloods with facts that are readily available but not in the general public's consciousness. For example, the heroes bring up Medal of Honor and Purple Heart recipient PFC Milton L. Olive, Jr. who earned his medal by absorbing the impact of a live grenade in 1963. He died at the age of 18, saving four of his comrades.
"He should be a household name like Audie Murphy was back in World War II. This is a real young kid who had experienced racism among the men he saved. I'm glad that people are learning his name because of the film," Willmott says.
Another way to rebut misrepresentations of history in one film is to make another. Willmott's next movie, which he directed, is The 24th, which chronicles the 24th United States Infantry Regiment and the riots in Houston in 1917.
"The 24th ... was the all-black infantry division of the Buffalo Soldiers ... sent to Houston, Texas, to guard the construction of Camp Logan that was designed to train soldiers to go to World War I. These guys had served in the Philippine insurrection and the Spanish-American War. These guys were veterans and were used to a certain degree of respect and dignity. They go down to Houston, and the police are just brutal and racist," he recalls.
"You know that song 'Midnight Special?' They have a line in the song, 'If you go to Houston, you'd better do right. You'd better not gamble. You'd better not fight.' They were acknowledging the bad police force in that song. Eventually, 150 members of the 24th marched on Houston and went after the police and killed five of them. It winds up being the largest murder trial in American history, and nobody in the country knows about this because the incident was buried, but it's a great example of how the war the black community has had with the police has gone on for a long time."