SPIKE LEE: Da 5 Bloods (2020)

Macintosh & Maud Haven't Seen What?!

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CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of war, racism, grief, trauma, PTSD, explosions, abuse, trauma.

We’re wrapping up our series with Spike’s most recent joint, traveling to Vietnam for a cross between Apocalypse Now and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. It’s another bold swing in the new era of Spike, but yet again, the balance is all off. When this movie is working, it’s a masterpiece, but there’s so much of it that feels like a slog. And it’s not because of anything fundamentally wrong with the story, just that there’s far too much of it, and far too much pontificating on the story itself. For the cast alone, though, it’s a shame this got buried in the COVID shutdown, because they deserve heaps of recognition. We conclude our director’s series with 2020’s Da 5 Bloods this week on Macintosh & Maud Haven’t Seen What?!

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Intro and outro music taken from the Second Movement of Ludwig von Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Hong Kong (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 HK) license. To hear the full performance or get more information, visit the song page at the Internet Archive.

Excerpt taken from “Time Has Come Today” written by Joseph Chambers and Willie Chambers, and performed by The Chambers Brothers. Copyright 1966, 1967 Sony Music Entertainment, Inc.

Excerpt taken from “Main Title” to the movie A Nightmare on Elm Street, composed by Charles Bernstein. Copyright 1984 New Line Cinema Corp.