Episode 51: Da 5 Bloods and Three Kings (featuring Billy Revell-Siō)

Cinema in Context

Treasure hunts in war. Billy Revell-Siō, William Chen and Jeremy Downing discuss the Netflix film Da 5 Bloods and 1999 film Three Kings. We begin by unpacking Da 5 Bloods, and how it doesn't work on a whole, but highlighting the areas that it does do well. We then talk about Three Kings and the commentary it is trying to achieve, the experimentation with film techniques and how well those elements have aged. We talk about the films' ability to be ironic and build commentary around American military involvement in other countries. We then discuss the cast of Three Kings, including Cliff Curtis, Spike Jonze, Said Taghmaoui, Judy Greer and Jamie Kennedy, alongside the leads of Mark "Marky Mark" Wahlberg, Ice Cube and George Clooney. We discuss the experimentation with film indicative of the late 1990s and early 2000s, including Ocean's Eleven, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, Run Lola Run and The Matrix. We finish with a discussion around how the cinema medium has changed and is changing, with the rise of Netflix and other streaming platforms and the disruption of Covid-19.