A Soldier's Story (1984) * * *

Directed by: Norman Jewison

Starring:   Howard E. Rollins, Jr., Adolph Caesar, Denzel Washington, Art Evans, Trey Wilson, Wings Hauser, Larry Riley, Robert Townsend

Norman Jewison has directed many great films about race relations and ethnicity.    In the Heat of the Night, Moonstruck, and The Hurricane are among those.     A Soldier's Story is a good film about race relations in World War II Deep South.     It does not transcend into greatness because it is at its core a murder mystery, one containing many red herrings and false conclusions before everything is finally sorted out.     The movie is enjoyable on that level.

A Soldier's Story opens with the murder of the mostly hated Sergeant Vernon Waters (Caesar), a crusty drill sergeant with a nasty streak towards the all-black platoon under his command.     He is drunk, beaten up, and then shot dead.     Early suspicion falls on white locals who don't like blacks.    Army lawyer Captain Richard Davenport (Rollins) is assigned to the case and begins his investigation, which is met with resistance from both the white base command and the blacks under Waters' charge.     Davenport will find no shortage of suspects since many openly hated the dead sergeant.

The sergeant is a man at war with himself as much as with his charges.    He believes blacks should behave so as to impress whites, thinking naively that such behavior will result in greater acceptance in a newly integrated army.     Those who don't act as Waters believes they should find themselves in his crosshairs.     One such trainee is CJ Memphis (Riley), who irks Waters to the point that he frames him for a murder.     This causes unexpected consequences, which send Waters further into self-hate.    

Adolph Caesar was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role.    He is by far the most interesting character in the movie.     We respond to him and his inner conflict.     Whomever killed Waters may have been doing him a favor.      There is also strong work from Denzel Washington (in one of his early film roles) as a private who stands up to Waters and earns his respect.      Rollins is the lead as the taciturn, by-the-book Davenport.     He was the pianist turned outlaw Coalhouse Walker Jr. in Ragtime (1981) and earned an Oscar nomination for that film.     He is the hero here, I suppose, but he instills the performance with more rigidity than is required.     He is so intense, we are waiting for him to explode.     Perhaps Davenport is seen by Jewison as the voice of law and order in such a tense situation, but I would like to have seen a little more humanity and dimension. 

The film falls back on the conventions of a murder mystery with the added dimension of race relations.     By making Waters such a polarizing figure, the movie at least makes it somewhat difficult to guess the identity of the killer.     It also plays fair with the rules of the genre, so it doesn't blindside us with a minor character we've paid little mind to.     There are some scenes and monologues which outstay their welcome, such as Waters' speech about his contempt for CJ or some of the musical numbers, but A Soldier's Story is a competently made, satisfying film.