Critic Reviews

It’s all so inventively bizarre that you could treat it simply as a black comedy, but in the final 15 minutes there is an amazing crescendo of emotion.

Lee has crafted an exciting, violent film that can be enjoyed as strictly that, but what elevates it to greatness is what it says and what it shows about the perception of Blackness, whether in heroic situations or human ones.

Director Lee and the team of writers have created an immersive, violent and sometimes shocking tapestry that plays out like “Deer Hunter” meets “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” with a steady undercurrent of subtle and not-so-subtle social and political commentary.

It is one of the greatest films Spike Lee has ever made.

This is a lobbed grenade. But it’s also personal filmmaking at its prodding, profound best. This is a Spike Lee joint and a Spike Lee history lesson. Prepare to be schooled.

Da 5 Bloods is Spike Lee at his mature best, made with his distinctive, passionate voice and kinetic artistry.

A drama crossed with a polemic that’s enriched by a black-history lesson, the film is sprawling, enthralling and essential viewing.

Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods is not only his best recent film, but also one of the most vital of the year.

What I didn’t expect—what kept me committed to Da 5 Bloods even as, at times, its looseness risked dulling what proves so fiery and strange about it—was that it would make me so sad. I think I have Lindo, especially, to blame for that. What a face. What anger. Real ones already knew what he was capable of, of course. But Da 5 Bloods gives him more room.

The teeming profusion of events that Lee dramatizes is inseparable from the historiography that he foregrounds throughout. Both are brought to life with an intricately varied texture of dialogue and gesture, purpose and spirit—a crucial aspect of Lee’s career-long artistry that, here, reaches new heights, thanks to an extraordinary cast of actors who blend fervor and nuance, and whom Lee directs with manifest inspiration.