So, there’s a nod to Walter Huston’s joyous gold discovery dance and Vietnamese bandits dare to paraphrase that line about not needing any stinkin’ badges. Steal from the best, as the adage goes, and “Treasure” is a vein worth mining. The loot has also already been turned into more palatable and recognizable gold bars.Īs in films like “ Inside Man” and “ BlacKkKlansman,” Lee unabashedly quotes his influences-he knows that you know what he’s doing, and he milks that for as much mileage as he can. Traven’s classic parable of greed, “ The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” Like that film, the plot involves a search for gold, though unlike Humphrey Bogart and John’s dad, Walter, the main characters here have a good idea where the treasure is. Running in parallel with these criticisms are blatant homages to other films, and not just war movies like “ Apocalypse Now,” which gets a visual name-check as the main characters do a pseudo-Soul Train line boogie to Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give it Up.” A big chunk of “Da 5 Bloods” pays tribute to John Huston’s masterful 1948 adaptation of B. It’s this type of whitewashing of veterans that Lee chips at with his cast and his story, the same type that would allow an NFL quarterback to imply that his White grandfathers were more patriotic than the soldiers of color who fought in the war with them, yet came home to inferior circumstances. There’s also commentary on just how White these movies were, with people like Chuck Norris and Sylvester Stallone achieving mythic glory while blithely erasing the fact that 32% of the soldiers in the jungle were Black. Lee is one of the few directors who takes to heart Godard’s comment that “In order to criticize a movie, you have to make another movie.” There is critique here, especially of films like “ The Green Berets,” “Rambo” and “Missing in Action,” with one character joking about how Hollywood went back to Vietnam to “try winning the war” on-screen. Between these two bookends is a heist movie of sorts, albeit one with far more on its mind than its plot details would suggest.
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