Delroy Lindo

  • Da 5 Bloods (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, October 2021) Don’t misunderstand me when I say that Spike Lee could have had an exemplary career as a pure entertainment filmmaker: He’s one of the most vital voices in American cinema and he wouldn’t be Spike Lee without constant engagement on social issues. But as many entries on his filmography suggest (25th hour, Inside Man, Oldboy), he could have made it solely on technical competence in delivering entertaining films. But his special genius lies elsewhere, in combining this entertainer’s instinct with works of social import. His latest two films, BlacKkKlansman and Da 5 Bloods, end up being among the best of his career in blending accessible narratives with pointed social issues. His latest film begins with exactly the right interview snippet: Mohammed Ali discussing how “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong,” thus putting the central idea of the film right up there: why would black soldiers serve a country that marginalized them so much? The way to illustrate this tension goes through a hard-to-resist premise: what if American soldiers went back to Vietnam fifty years later to find the remains of their commanding officer… and a crate filled with gold? The early moments of Da 5 Bloods present themselves as something of a romp, as our elderly veterans (led by Delroy Lindo) take in the sights of a westernized Saigon and head over to their adventure. But pay attention to the flashbacks and the foreshadowing about landmines because the film becomes darker in a single moment and its second half is a far more thrilling contemporary adventure in which, as usual, finding the gold isn’t nearly as difficult as keeping it. Jean Reno has a small but enjoyable role, while Chadwick Boseman makes a remarkable appearance (one of his last) and Hollywood newcomer Sandy Hương Phạm provides a remarkable emotional linchpin to the film. It gets overly violent at times (even though: hey, it’s a war film) but engrossing throughout even as it switches gears as it goes on. It’s a really good film, and doesn’t skimp on the American racial divide either. Da 5 Bloods is another success for Spike Lee, who seems to be getting a second or even third wind as a filmmaker.

  • A Life Less Ordinary (1997)

    A Life Less Ordinary (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2015) In trying to explain the mess that is A Life Less Ordinary, I’m tempted to say that one doesn’t become a daring visionary director without making a few mistakes along the way, and so Danny Boyle didn’t become Danny Boyle without making a few less-successful films on his way to Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours.  A Life Less Ordinary could have been a frantic star-crossed crime romance between an arrogant heiress and an oppressed blue-collar worker, but the script felt that it was necessary to frame this romance in a fantasy involving angels tasked in making two very different people fall in love.  You can see here the various frantic methods that Boyle often uses to shake things up, even though they’re not always successful.  Depicting heaven as a police station where everything is in white?  Great visuals, all the way down to the white stockings.  Spending an interminable time with characters signing Beyond the Sea in a redneck karaoke bar?  Oh, shoot me now.  Ewan MacGregor isn’t much more than simply OK in the lead role, while Cameron Diaz gets an early borderline-unlikable role to play –far more interesting are Delroy Lindo and Holly Hunter as angels on a mission, even though the particulars of their plot-line are increasingly ridiculous.  A Life Less Ordinary is a film less ordinary, and it suffers from its own quirkiness, trying to blend romance with fantasy with bloody violence.  The tonal shifts are severe and the whole thing becomes some something to be appreciated more than to be experienced: I suspect that I would have liked the film more had I seen it fifteen years ago.  I also suspect that the film suffered from comparisons to Boyle’s earlier Shallow Grave and Trainspotting.  Not, it’s not as good as those two.  On the other hand, it does have a considerable amount of (misguided) energy, which isn’t too bad.  If nothing else, it can still claim, more than a decade and a half later, that there still isn’t anything quite like it.