The cast is headed by Delroy Lindo (Malcolm X), Jonathan Majors (The Last Black Man in San Francisco), Clarke Peters (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), Norm Lewis (Stand By Me), and Isiah Whitlock, Jr. (BlacKkKlansman). It was shot on location in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as Saigon) and in Cambodia.
The setting is Nam now, 50 years later. Trump is in the White House. Lee has four tired, paunchy African-American vets entering their 70s -- Paul, Melvin, Otis and Eddie -- returning to the scene of the crime, literally, to recover gold they've hidden and, more importantly, they tell themselves, to find the remains of their former beloved platoon leader, Stormin' Norman, killed during a firefight with the VC. There are flashbacks of Norman's courage and skill as a fighter, but, more importantly, we're told he was the spiritual glue that held the Bloods together, almost a minister in stature, constantly reinforcing the value of their brotherly bonding. He provides lessons in Black history, telling the men the American Revolution began with Crispus Attucks being shot first at the Boston Massacre.
Such blooding becomes especially important, when the atrocities mount up in Nam, and over the radio Hanoi Hannah addresses them personally, and announces MLK's 1968 assassination and ensuing race riots, and forces them to question why American Blacks would fight in such a war, given the oppression of their race back home. We see grown men crying, without answers, and helpless to fight the real battle Hannah refers to. So they are properly motivated when they come across a C-47 CIA plane that's gone down containing dozens of bricks of gold meant for pay-offs that they decide to bury and come back for after the war. But Norman gets killed and this becomes a focal point in the return of the four. They are later joined by Paul's son, David, making it five Bloods again.
Relationships are at the heart of the movie. And the five Bloods are not the only cluster of importance. At the beginning of the film, Lee inserts snippets of Black voices calling America out on her racist policies and demanding change -- Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, MLK, and Bobby Seale, all return in tiny moments from an era nobody even remembers any more. There's Otis's warm reunion with his former Vietnamese girlfriend, Tià ªn Luu, a prostitute during the war, who introduces him to their grown-up daughter, Michon. There's Hedy ("as in Lamarr"), a beautiful French woman who hits it off with David at a bar, as well as her two mates Simon and Seppo, the three forming LAMB, a peacenik group in Nam to clear unexploded ordnance.
Equally important is the backdrop of the country -- the Vietnamese are depicted getting on with normal, modern lives. Ho Chi Minh City is bustling. Rice paddy farmers quietly go about their work and call out 'hello' as the Bloods pass. Folks along the river going about their days, it seems, trying to get by for another day -- just like before the war. There are signs of hidden hostility that will become important for Lee's themes later, such as when a Vietnamese imp fucks with the Bloods's PTSD by exploding some firecrackers, causing them to eat dirt. A Nam flashback -- in Nam itself!
While it's a fine ensemble cast, with complex projections of character, the central character in the film is Delroy Lindo's Paul. He's haunted by Norman's ghost. He's angry, energized by his troubles; he's a failed state, or, as he calls himself, weeping, "I'm a broken man," words made more poignant by his hulk and seeming strength; he's the Blood who needs containing. He bears a rage he can't find a way to overcome. And as if that weren't bad enough, he's a Trump-ite, who wears a "Make America Great Again" cap, and says crazy sh*t to his buddies, like, "Time we got these freeloading immigrants off our back and built that wall." Paul becomes Lee's catalyst for the action that unfolds; he's a time bomb waiting to explode. He's especially reactive to locals who approach him for money. Something's gotta give.
Lee sprinkles the visual narrative with images of Black legends and resistance to white domination, newsreel footage of atrocities, and makes several allusions to other Oscar-winning films. Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now becomes the name of a lively, airy bar -- you can imagine a drink on the menu called The Horror The Horror; and, when the Bloods make their way up the river (to the tune of Ride of the Valkyries), it's to locate the gold and Norman, not Kurtz. Oliver Stone's Platoon is referenced, as is the weariness of Martin Scorsese's The Irishman. A whiff of Three Kings. Even Tarrantino is alluded to a couple of times -- in a scene where bad French is spoken by an American, reminiscent of Inglorious Basterds, and another where Paul cites Psalm 24:3 -- a cry for redemption -- replacing Samuel L. Jackson's Ezekiel 25:17 threat of vengeance in Pulp Fiction. Hell, even John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre figures into Lee's thinking (Badges?).
Probably the most telling quote from the film comes when three of the Bloods are out walking one night in Ho Chi Minh City with the guide they've hired to take them to the gold and Norman. Eddie, the ostensibly most successful of the Bloods (he has a black American Express, but he's close to bust), takes a look around at the commercial development and says, "Will you look at this? [the neon lights of capital everywhere] They didn't need us. They should've just sent Mickey D's, Pizza Hut and The Colonel, and we would've defeated the VC in one week." Sure, it worked in China (too well). The Russians ate it up. Probably the Koreans would too, if given half a chance. The North and South are only at war now because the Americans and Soviets reneged on their promise to the Koreans upon their release from the control of the Japanese at the end of WWII.
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