Delroy Lindo sees ‘Da 5 Bloods’ role as ‘tragic character’

Delroy Lindo was 16 and living in London during the height of the Vietnam War. “Of course I knew about the war,” he says, “but I was totally obsessed with acting. I didn’t really begin my education about the Vietnam War until I started preparing for ‘Da 5 Bloods.’”

That preparation yielded major dividends. In his fourth collaboration with writer-director Spike Lee, Lindo lends a spooky intensity to Paul, the PTSD-afflicted Vietnam vet who reunites in present-day Ho Chi Minh City with three Black war buddies and his son. Their mission: retrieve gold buried in the jungle decades earlier by CIA operatives.

The film pushes Lindo into uncharted realms as a broken ex-soldier, riven by paranoia, who talks to ghosts and ultimately goes mad. Lindo says, “I don’t want to say it’s ‘once in a lifetime,’ because I hope there are other experiences [in the future], but from…