‘Da 5 Bloods’: Delroy Lindo’s “Salt in the Vaseline” Monologue is One for the Ages

Spike Lee‘s Da 5 Bloods is an urgent masterpiece about the devastation of war: physical, cultural, and most hauntingly, mental. While the film is brilliant from start to finish, there’s one scene that stands out. Almost two hours into the film, Delroy Lindo‘s Paul delivers a heart-stopping monologue to camera. Alone in the jungle, fraying at the ends, and meditating on a lifetime of disappointment, Paul goes from rambling about not being fucked with the “salt in the vaseline” to revealing doctors say he’s dying of cancer he contracted from exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. By the monologue’s end, Paul is proclaiming that no one will tell him when or how to die except himself, giving the Da 5 Blood‘s ending an even more tragic lens.

Delroy Lindo’s monologue in Da 5 Bloods is straight up one for the ages.

Da 5 Bloods on Netflix follows a group of four Black Vietnam vets as they return to the crucible of their shared trauma. Their goal is twofold: to recover the remains of their fallen comrade “Stormin’ Norman” (Chadwick Boseman) and return home with a cache of gold Norman died protecting. Each of the friends has had their trials in the ensuing years, but none struggles quite so bad with his PTSD than Delroy Lindo’s Paul. Jumpy, paranoid, irate, and passionately committed to looking out for himself at all costs, Paul is a living, breathing reminder of the cruelty of war. Between his devotion to President Trump and his cantankerous relationship with his sweet, scholarly son David (Jonathan Majors), we see that Paul is a man who lives out of spite.

As Da 5 Bloods moves into the untamed jungles of Vietnam, Paul’s mental state becomes wilder to boot. He begins to argue with friends and almost gets into a physical altercation with a local. Upon finding a gun that Otis (Clarke Peters) was given by his Vietnamese lover Tien (Lê Y Lan), Paul assumes the worst. Paul’s moods only escalate further into menace once they find the gold. After friend Eddie (Norm Lewis) steps on a landmine and perishes, the group is met by a group of anti-landmine activists who want to help. Paul, however, immediately casts them as a threat and captures them. After a firefight with Vietnamese men looking to steal back the gold, Paul angrily goes his own way, leaving his own son, injured in the jungle, with his surviving friends and allies.

Now alone, Paul is free to give voice to the demons flittering around the darkest corners of his psyche. The monologue starts off sounding like the unhinged ramblings of a man unstuck in space and time. Paul refers to himself in the third person while also carrying on a conversation with an invisible officer. He boasts that the rest of the group was born weak, especially Otis. Paul insists that they aren’t going to take what’s his every again: “They ain’t snatching my gold bars. Not Paul. No, sir. I ain’t getting fucked again. Trying to fuck me with that salt in the Vaseline. Not Paul. Not this time.”

For Paul, the gold doesn’t just represent wealth or recompense. The gold is all Paul has left. Life has screwed him over so many times that he is determined not to lose this one final treasure. He will not get fucked “with that salt in the Vaseline” ever again. The coarse metaphor is a reference to forced anal sex. Vaseline is sometimes used as a lubricant and putting salt in it would defeat the purpose. Paul is saying that life has not only screwed him over against his will, but that he’s suffered even more injury in each slight.

As Lindo gets closer to the camera, the tone shifts. He is completely dialed into the moment, staring down Lee’s lens, and confessing the deepest, darkest secrets in his soul. He’s visibly heartbroken over what he perceives as David’s betrayal. (It’s worth noting that in a subsequent scene, David reveals that he believes the source of their acrimony is the fact that his mother died in childbirth. Yet another treasure life has stolen from Paul.) He then reveals that the VA hospital has told him that he is dying of a malignant tumor, given to him by the toxic Agent Orange the US Army used as a biological weapon in Vietnam. Indeed, it is one of the most painfully tragic ironies that many Vietnam vets died of cancer decades after their service, all thanks to the Army’s own actions.

“You made me malignant,” Paul says, “…this fucking place here.”

By the monologue’s end, Paul is proclaiming that he will choose where and how he will die. His years of service couldn’t kill him and now he refuses to bow to cancer. It’s a moving scene of defiance, punctuated by Paul lifting his fist, a sign of Black Power. It’s also undercut with horrific tension as the audience knows that Paul has four Vietnamese fighters on his tail.

In the end, the jungle takes Paul. First he’s bitten by a snake, next he loses his pack, and finally, he is forced to dig his own grave before being mowed down in a hail storm of bullets. However, before this happens, Paul is visited by the spirit of Stormin’ Norman. It’s revealed that Paul accidentally killed his commanding officer and best friend. Norman forgives Paul and embraces him. By the time that Paul is staring down his death, he is proudly singing a spiritual proclaiming that Christ will forgive his sins. Is he the last man standing? No, but he dies with grace, courage, and dignity.

However Paul’s biggest moment is that searing monologue. It’s a heady plunge into the trauma eating away at a man’s soul with both poison and spite. Moreover it is a spell-binding masterclass in acting from Delroy Lindo. Good Fight fans like myself already know the man is the most under-appreciated acting talent in the business, but Da 5 Bloods positions himself as one of the best actors alive. Lindo is spectacular throughout the film, but that monologue takes his performance, and Da 5 Bloods itself, to the next level. More haunting than the film’s violence or gore, Delroy Lindo’s monologue in Da 5 Bloods will follow you for the rest of your life.

Watch Da 5 Bloods on Netflix