How black soldiers were marginalised

When Lee first received the script for Da 5 Bloods, it was about four white veterans, and had once been destined to be filmed by Oliver Stone. Working with his regular co-scriptwriter Kevin Wilmott Jr, Lee then made these characters African-American and recontextualised the whole story. In looking at war through an explicitly racial prism, it feels revelatory.

Powerfully, it all begins with archive footage of the legendary boxer Muhammad Ali talking on camera in 1978 about why he refused to fight in Vietnam: “[The Vietnamese] didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality,” he said.

Over a decade earlier, Ali had been sentenced to five years in jail for draft dodging; his heavyweight title and boxing licence were revoked, though he stayed out of prison while he appealed against the decision. Then, in 1971, the Supreme Court finally sided with the boxer, declaring that he was a bona-fide conscientious objector and not an illegal draft dodger.

War on two fronts

Ali’s words come at the beginning of a montage featuring stills of African-Americans fighting in Vietnam, Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, Malcom X delivering a heartfelt speech, Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising a fisted glove on the medals podium at the Mexico ’68 Olympics, images of poverty in Harlem, and civil rights activist Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) arguing “America has declared war on black people”. Then comes perhaps