I do so love the premise of Spike Lee’s latest film about a group of black American Vietnam War veterans who return to Vietnam in the present day. But while this film is packed full of references to black causes and culture, and makes some attempt to present events from the Vietnamese perspective, it remains at its heart an action movie whose shallowness and inherent American-ness even is at odds with the seriousness of the themes it wants to explore.

The four surviving members of a squad of black soldiers who call themselves the Bloods return to Vietnam in the present day. Their aim is to recover the remains of their squad leader Stormin Norman who died on their last mission but also to retrieve the gold that they were supposed to deliver on that mission but secretly buried. Soon after their arrival, they are joined by David, the son of one of them, Paul. Another one of them Otis contacts an old Vietnamese girlfriend Tiên to introduce them to someone who can help them get the gold out of the country and a local tour guide Vinh gets them to where they need to go into the jungle by themselves. As they travel, they must contend with Paul’s severe PTSD and his issues with David, Stormin Norman’s original order that the gold should go towards helping black people in general instead of their own private gain and the danger that comes from other parties who want the gold as well.

This is a pretty long film, especially with the extensive flashback scenes of the squad’s last mission. Lee chose to shoot the past and the present scenes using completely different cinematic styles and I have to say that I found the present day scenes much more interesting. Despite the time and no doubt expense devoted to it, the action scenes in here are pretty mediocre and too many war films already use the old newsreel-style look. We were also puzzled by the choice of the swelling war music which as my wife thought felt almost sarcastic given how tonally inappropriate they for the emotions of the scenes. My favorite parts of the film are when the group explores Vietnam like regular American tourists being amazed at how modern and different the country is now. The backstory of Otis, the one with the Vietnamese girlfriend is predictable but I do like how it highlights the extra degree of discrimination faced by mixed children with black ancestry.

The film’s strongest point is black Americans soldiers in Vietnam were fighting an unjust war when their own real oppressors were back in the US. This is explicitly laid out in the Hanoi Hannah radio deejay sequences which are excellent and make a decent case that black American soldiers and the Vietcong ought to be on the same side. Unfortunately this isn’t really part of the main plot and none of the Vietnamese characters play major roles. Worse, it seems to me that even as they express disappointment at how America has historically treated black people, they still uphold an unironically pro-American view even at the expense of people of other nationalities. The film cares more about championing the black cause, but this is mostly what the deceased Norman wants as the rest just want the gold for selfish reasons. This may be realistic but it’s not terribly interesting and the film doesn’t do much to look beyond the views of its characters. Mostly it feels like Lee wants to join in on shouting BLM slogans but doesn’t have anything of his own to add to the tumult of voices.

While there are some decent parts to this film, this is overall a disappointment and I would attribute this to Lee getting old and out of touch. One good thing about it is that black Americans get a Vietnam action movie of their own but that’s all it does and even this feels like an oddly 1980s take on action scenes. Better watch what younger black American directors are making these days as they have a much better grasp on what modern America is like for black people.