Overly long and underwhelming

Rating: 4/10 (14 June 2020)

It's no secret that Spike Lee is an intriguing filmmaker. Throughout his career, works like Do the Right Thing and BlackKklansman have not only entertained us, but Lee has made his mark on cinema through the themes of these films. However, in my opinion, in the case of Da 5 Bloods, the standard we could expect from Spike Lee was not met.
Yes, the cinematography is decent. There are some nice shots and camerawork capturing the Vietnamese landscape. But there's nothing we haven't seen before, and the film's environmental features can only take it so far. This film is not so driven by war sequences, as the trailer would have you believe, but rather by dialogue - a LOT of dialogue. And unfortunately, it doesn't lead anywhere interesting.
Granted, Lee didn't write the film solo, so I can't fault him completely. But it seems almost as if he thought that making this film unnecessarily long would inherently make it good. No, not every movie is good just because it is 2.5 hours. And this one felt like every minute of its running time was dragging. I fount myself watching it in small doses, and at some points it actually felt like a chore to get through. The problem is, aside from a few timely lines about our current political crisis in the US, there's not much character development and the conversations become ultimately meaningless.
This isn't a war film. It tries to be a character study about friendship with some comedy and historical fiction, but really it doesn't engage the viewer enough with its thin story to fill its running time effectively. The main reason to watch it is for Lee's direction, but we've already seen better from him.