While there are no summer blockbusters coming to theaters–at least for the next few months–Netflix is soon unveiling one of their biggest movies of the year. After his Oscar-winning BlacKkKlansman, Spike Lee is back with Da 5 Bloods, a 154-minute epic which will arrive on June 12, and now the first trailer has landed.
Starring Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Jean Reno, and Chadwick Boseman, the film follows four black war veterans who return to Vietnam to search for their missing commander and hopefully find treasure. Using a mix of archival footage, present-day, and flashbacks–seemingly all on different formats–the trailer has quite the epic scope with this riff on The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
“I’ve always given homages to films I love in my films,” Lee tells Vanity Fair, revealing nods to Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, as quite visibly seen in the trailer. “I want to go on record on this. I’m not being disrespectful to any Vietnam film that’s been made, except maybe The Green Berets with John Wayne, who is not a hero of mine.”
See the trailer below for the film, which also stars, Mélanie Thierry, Paul Walter Hauser, Jasper Pääkkönen, Johnny Trí Nguyễn, and Van Veronica Ngo.
From Academy Award® Winner Spike Lee comes a New Joint: the story of four African-American Vets — Paul (Delroy Lindo), Otis (Clarke Peters), Eddie (Norm Lewis), and Melvin (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) — who return to Vietnam. Searching for the remains of their fallen Squad Leader (Chadwick Boseman) and the promise of buried treasure, our heroes, joined by Paul’s concerned son (Jonathan Majors), battle forces of Man and Nature — while confronted by the lasting ravages of The Immorality of The Vietnam War.
Da 5 Bloods hits Netflix on June 12.