DA 5 BLOODS (US - 2020) Directed by Spike Lee. Written by Danny Bilson, Paul DeMeo, Kevin Willmott and Spike Lee. Cast: Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis, Isiah Whitlock Jr, Chadwick Boseman, Jean Reno, Melanie Thierry, Paul Walter Hauser, Jasper Paakkonen, Johnny Tri Nguyen, Le Y Lan, Nguyen Ngoc Lam, Sandy Huong Pham, Van Veronica Ngo. (R, 155 mins) His 2018 film BLACKkKLANSMAN reflected a still-open wound with its release timed to the one-year anniversary of the Charlottesville tragedy, but DA 5 BLOODS finds Spike Lee making a film boiling with such rage over systemic racism that it could've been shot in the last two weeks. Of course, that systemic racism is there and always has been, but no film in recent memory has felt more "of the moment" than this, a sprawling and ambitious epic that does, on a few occasions, get too uneven and too unwieldy for its good. Lee and BLACKkKLANSMAN co-writer Kevin Willmott extensively reworked an existing script called THE LAST TOUR, written in 2013 by the team of Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo, who got their start in the '80s writing cult sci-fi B movies like TRANCERS and ELIMINATORS for Charles Band's Empire Pictures. They soon moved up to THE ROCKETEER for Disney and into TV with the CBS series THE FLASH (DA 5 BLOODS also marks the final writing credit for DeMeo, who died in 2018 and gets a special acknowledgement in the end credits). Bilson and DeMeo have always had an affinity for men-on-a-mission wartime scenarios, from 1986's ZONE TROOPERS all the way to 2013's DTV video-game spinoff THE COMPANY OF HEROES and it's their LAST TOUR script that provides the foundation for DA 5 BLOODS, as four aging vets go back to Vietnam of the present day, ostensibly to retrieve the remains of their fallen friend, but with a second, off-the-record reason: to retrieve a chest of CIA gold they retrieved from a plane crash in 1971 and buried.
That B-movie premise has Bilson's and DeMeo's fingerprints all over it--one can imagine them saying "It's THE DEER HUNTER meets KELLY'S HEROES!"--but Lee goes bigger. He's mining superficially similar territory here with the African-American POV of his 2008 WWII film MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA, but DA 5 BLOODS tracks the fury of '60s activism (clips of Malcolm X, MLK, Kwame Ture) all the way through to the advent of Black Lives Matter and the Age of Trump, whose presence is felt here even beyond being referred to as "President Fake Bone Spurs." The four vets are Otis (Clarke Peters), Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr), Eddie (Norm Lewis), and Paul (Delroy Lindo), and though an ensemble piece for the most part, it's Paul who becomes the emotional center of the film. Still suffering from PTSD, short-tempered, paranoid, and with an ever-present chip on his shoulder and looking for confrontation everywhere, staunch conservative Paul is a ticking time bomb waiting to go off even before he starts parroting Trump talking points about immigrants, fake news, and "building the wall," plus other derogatory terms for the Vietnamese people. All of the men are haunted by the death of their unit leader and friend "Stormin' Norman" (Chadwick Boseman in flashbacks), killed in action back in 1971 just after they retrieved and buried the gold, but Paul has been unable to move on. That extends to his fractured relationship with his son David (Jonathan Majors), a liberal Black Studies instructor at Morehouse who's earned nothing but scornful derision from his father ("You've been an anchor around my neck since the day you were born"). Though there's no affection between them, David shows up at their Saigon hotel unexpectedly out of concern for his dad and insists on tagging along, telling him "You've been acting more crazy than usual."
Through wealthy investment broker Tien (Le Y Lan), a former prostitute that Otis knew during what the Vietnamese call "The American War," they meet with Desroche (Jean Reno), a French money launderer who agrees to convert the gold to cash for a 22% share (it was only 20%, but Paul starts getting belligerent about Normandy and how America had to "save France's ass" during WWII). With a map provided by guide Vinh (Johnny Tri Nguyen), they head back into the jungles of 'Nam in search of the gold and the burial spot of Stormin' Norman, with Paul sporting a red MAGA hat to everyone's disdain. The journey begins with a slow boat ride accompanied by Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries," which isn't the only APOCALYPSE NOW reference over the course of the film. There's even an APOCALYPSE NOW banner in a nightclub in downtown Saigon, where neon signs for McDonalds, Pizza Hut, and KFC illustrate how things have changed in the nearly 50 years since they were last there. There's also an invocation of "We don't need no stinkin' badges!" from THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, and the references, shout-outs and the loose, freewheeling nature--with occasional cutaways to North Vietnamese radio propagandist Hanoi Hannah (Van Veronica Ngo)-- make this feel like a Quentin Tarantino film at times, not in terms of any revisionist history (Melvin does take the time to mock the '80s "free the POW" movies of Sylvester Stallone and "Walker, Texas Ranger"), but in a more enraged and politically substantive manner. Unlike what Bilson and DeMeo wrote for THE LAST TOUR, DA 5 BLOODS explores in depth the experience of the black soldier in Vietnam (Hanoi Hannah reminding them "Black G.I., is it fair that Negroes make up 11% of the US population but among American troops, you are 32%?) in ways that Hollywood typically hasn't focused on, aside from the mid '90s films DEAD PRESIDENTS and the virtually forgotten THE WALKING DEAD.
DA 5 BLOODS doesn't always feel cohesive as far as how the Bilson/DeMeo material meshes with what was written later by Lee and Willmott. At times, it's a straight-up treasure-hunt adventure once some Vietnamese adversaries led by the embittered Quan (Nguyen Ngoc Lam) enter the picture. It's also prone to some hard-to-swallow contrivances, like the discovery of the gold and Stormin' Norman's remains, as well as a trio of activists (Melanie Thierry, Paul Walter Hauser, and Jasper Paakkonen) who go into war zones to find and defuse land mines showing up exactly when their services are needed. Terence Blanchard's otherwise fine score seems a little intrusive and overbearing in the flashbacks, which Lee frames in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, with the jungle sequences at 1.85 and the Saigon scenes at 2.35. And as welcome as it might be, the anti-Trump sentiment feels occasionally wedged in, especially in an earlier scene where David has a conversation with the three activists at a Saigon bar. Lee also takes a big risk in having Lindo, Peters, Lewis, and Whitlock play their characters in the flashbacks minus any IRISHMAN-like CGI de-aging, but it works because they're presented in a kind-of stream-of-consciousness fashion and he mainly keeps the four of them in shadows or in the background as the focus is on Boseman. All in all, DA 5 BLOODS is a powerful film with a startling resonance to things happening right now. It also boasts a career-best performance by an absolutely riveting Lindo, who's alternately despicable, heartbreaking, and utterly devastating as Paul, whose story and the source of his Vietnam anguish, and the reasons he's been such an asshole to his son, don't fully come into view until late in the film, though you'll probably figure some of it out before then. Be sure to watch through the very end of the closing credits to catch a fun stinger for Isiah Whitlock Jr superfans.
RICHARD JEWELL (US - 2019) Directed by Clint Eastwood. Written by Billy Ray. Cast: Paul Walter Hauser, Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bates, Jon Hamm, Olivia Wilde, Nina Arianda, Ian Gomez, Dylan Kussman, Niko Nicotera, Wayne Duvall, David Shae, Mike Pniewski, Charles Green, Billy Slaughter, Eric Mendenhall. (R, 131 mins)
After granting himself not one but two threesomes in 2018's surprisingly lighthearted geriatric drug trafficking saga THE MULE, Clint Eastwood returns to his unofficial "American Heroes" series with RICHARD JEWELL. Late-period Eastwood has been maddeningly inconsistent, from the hagiography of AMERICAN SNIPER to his playing fast and loose with the facts in SULLY to the completely botched THE 15:17 TO PARIS, where he couldn't possibly have been less engaged with the material. Eastwood's always worked fast (RICHARD JEWELL began filming in late June 2019, and it's already out), but there's been an increasing sloppiness to his films as he's gotten older, almost like he's more concerned with getting it done than getting it right, but at 89, he seems to be mostly back on his game with RICHARD JEWELL. Helping immensely is Paul Walter Hauser as Jewell (1962-2007), the security guard who discovered a pipe bomb in Atlanta's Centennial Park during the 1996 Summer Olympics, and quickly went from hero to prime suspect thanks to an anxious FBI and an overzealous media. Hauser, also memorable as Shawn Eckardt, the hapless "bodyguard" and "terrorism expert" involved in the attack on figure skater Nancy Kerrigan, in I, TONYA, turns in the best performance Eastwood's gotten out of an actor in years, fearlessly capturing all facets of Jewell, whether it's his insecurities, his flaws, his eagerness to respect authority, and his foolish belief that the FBI agents investigating him are "fellow law enforcement." The well-intentioned Jewell is a wannabe cop who was dismissed from the sheriff's department and later fired from a university after student complaints and for overstepping his bounds, even pulling people over off-campus when he suspected them of DUI. He studies the penal code on his nights off and clings to his pipe dream of becoming a police officer. He's encouraged by his mother Bobi (Kathy Bates), who almost certainly realizes it's never going to happen for Richard, but she loves him too much to hurt his feelings.
Jewell's life changed on July 27, 1996 when he was working security and discovered a mysterious backpack under a bench near the sound tower in Centennial Park, which was packed with people attending a Jack Mack and the Heart Attack concert. Initially dismissed by cops at the event aware of his history of being overzealous, Jewell persisted until someone in charge opened the backpack and found the bomb. It went off, killing one and wounding 111 others. Jewell was immediately hailed as a hero who saved lives but FBI investigators, led by composite characters Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm) and Dan Bennet (Ian Gomez) start putting together a profile that points to Jewell, basing it on his obsession with becoming a cop, his desire to be a hero, his being fired from past security jobs, his large size, that he lives with his mother, etc. Over drinks, Shaw leaks to ambitious Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde) that they're looking at Jewell and the paper runs with it on the front page. Within three days of the bombing, Jewell is now the prime suspect being hounded by the media and Shaw, who has no actual evidence but keeps trying to trick Jewell into incriminating himself. With nowhere to turn and with the FBI determined to pin the bombing on him, Jewell calls mercurial attorney Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell), who was at a law firm a decade earlier where Jewell worked as a supply room clerk and, as Jewell tells him, "you were the only one who talked to me and treated me like a human being."
Eastwood being engaged with the material makes a difference, and his fury over the treatment of Jewell, who was eventually exonerated three months later (Eric Rudolph was captured in 2003 and confessed to Centennial Park and numerous other bombings) is palpable. That's perhaps to a fault, especially in regards to the way the film handles Scruggs, the real reporter who broke the story. Eastwood and screenwriter Billy Ray (SHATTERED GLASS) came under fire as the film was released for their depiction of Scruggs, an actual person who died in 2001 and isn't here to defend herself, offering sex in exchange for a hot tip from Hamm's Shaw, a fictional character created for the film. There's plenty of blame to lay at the feet of Scruggs and the Atlanta Journal Constitution without resorting to cheap-shot slut-shaming or turning her into a vamping, strutting, bitch-on-wheels femme fatale out of an early '90s straight-to-video erotic thriller. Wilde's performance as Scruggs is absolutely ridiculous in its cartoon villainy (made even more hollow by her later teary realization that she's been instrumental in railroading Jewell before promptly disappearing from the film), and here once again, Eastwood is overdoing it to further stack the deck against an American Hero™, like the guy heading the NTSB inquiry in SULLY doing everything short of twirling a mustache in his ruthless quest to nail Sully Sullenberger's balls to the wall for the Miracle on the Hudson, a sentiment that necessitated Sullenberger requesting the names of those characters be changed because that's not how they treated him. Making her the cold-blooded Mean Girl of the AJC newsroom also doesn't seem an accurate representation from what her colleagues have said, but with her cackling and preposterously evil interpretation of Scruggs, Wilde often appears to be auditioning for a future role as Cruella de Vil in a 101 DALMATIANS reboot she thinks might happen two or three decades down the road. I don't think Wilde's performance is entirely her fault--this is how she's been directed to play it--but it's the one big misstep that Eastwood makes in an otherwise fine film.
So yes, the Scruggs scenes are a major detriment to RICHARD JEWELL, but Hauser, Bates, and Rockwell are so good that they manage to wash away the bad aftertaste. After seeing his work here, it's hard to imagine anyone else playing Jewell, though Jonah Hill was initially attached when the project went into development as THE BALLAD OF RICHARD JEWELL back in 2014 with Leonardo DiCaprio as Bryant and Paul Greengrass set to direct (Hill and DiCaprio have producer credits here). His being generally little-known works to Hauser's advantage, and his resemblance to Jewell is striking (Eastwood uses real footage of Jewell in news clips on TV, and it's hard to tell the difference between subject and actor). But even beyond that, Hauser just brilliantly captures the little moments where the eager-to-please Jewell just can't stop himself from opening his big mouth, despite being repeatedly admonished by Bryant to say nothing. When the FBI team comes in to his mother's apartment and starts ransacking the place, even taking her Tupperware and underwear as evidence, he's still agreeably offering "If you need help finding anything, let me know." The expression on Hauser's face, regret over being a willing doormat combined with the faint hope that the agents view him as an equal, as Jewell can't even look at Bryant or his mom as they glare at him, speaks volumes. Also worthy of mention in a scene-stealing supporting role is Nina Arianda as Nadya, Bryant's no-nonsense secretary and legal aid, who very quietly becomes the heart and soul of the unlikely Jewell support team that also includes his only friend, Dave Dutchess (Niko Nicotera) who's hauled in by the FBI as a possible accomplice, with agents also threatening to start a rumor that he and Jewell are lovers (that Jewell is very adamant about clearing up that falsehood is another risky move for woke 2019, but it's true to the character). With a mishandling of Scruggs that's irresponsible at best and misogynistic at worst, RICHARD JEWELL is a decidedly flawed film, but at the end of the day, it's one of the better offerings from this latter period of Eastwood's legendary career, thanks mostly to a committed and often quite moving performance by Paul Walter Hauser.
