Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

VividSimon Simply Perfect

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Benedito Dias Rodrigues This picture strangely passed by me and l didn't have another oppotunity to see on TV again,now on very first time on DVD which l'd bought years before, Although it is very predicable,the writter gave a clue when the Sergeant was killed by their own people,it was so clear that spoil the whole story,but the main target of the movie never was sergeant's behavior,but the message to reach the audience about the real facts during World War 2,when black soldiers never were accepted in same places with white soldiers,more they didn't have any recognition from the Army,including medals of honour after risking their lives for homeland....worst making every kind of dirtiest job in the army.....in the bonus has a little doc about that matter,shame for a country which has two kind of people!!Resume:First watch: 2018 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 8

classicalsteve One of the toughest tasks for playwrights and filmmakers is to create a piece that explores a known injustice without it seeming either like a moral sermon or a propaganda speech. "A Soldier's Story" adapted from the Pultizer-prize winning play ("A Soldier's Play") by Charles Fuller meets the issue of racism in such a way that you never feel like the producers were standing on soap boxes. Instead, Charles Fuller and Norman Jewison make their point through a thoroughly compelling murder mystery set on a "colored" or rather African-American army base in a southern rural community during the latter part of World War II. Or better stated, the story makes its own point without the writer or the filmmakers pushing the over-arching themes on the audience with a sledge-hammer. The point of the story is only gradually revealed, and not unlike an Agatha Christie mystery, the solution is unexpected, startling and simultaneously sobering. This is not just pure escapism, although much of the story is highly entertaining and thought-provoking, much like Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn".The first scene is the murder itself, inflicted upon some kind of army sergeant who happens to be a "mulatto", someone of white and black lineage. While wandering from the local tavern completely "juiced" late one night, he is shot in cold blood. The base is convinced the murder was at the hands of the KKK who don't like the base comprised of African-Americans in their neck of the woods. A few weeks later, an African-American army officer, Captain Davenport (Howard Rollins) arrives from Washington DC to investigate the crime, which gets quite a stir as no one in this predominantly white community has ever seen a black commissioned officer before. The officer begins his investigation by interviewing the many soldiers of the platoon who had been under the leadership of the slain sergeant.We learn that the victim of the story, Sergeant Waters, played by Adolph Caesar in an academy-nominated performance in which he re-prised his role from the stage play, was a hard-driving non-commissioned officer who feels like his men can't quite measure up to his expectations. His African-American platoon was actually a baseball team, and no matter that they won nearly every game and might have had a chance to play the NY Yankees in an exhibition game, Waters seems unimpressed. After winning a big game against a white team, instead of allowing the players to celebrate, he wants them to work mundane detail. Even when one of the white captains insists the men can take the rest of the day off, Waters tries to change his mind. When Private Peterson (Denzel Washington) protests, he and the sergeant engage in hand-to-hand combat.As the investigation continues, we learn more and more about the victim as the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. Underneath a veneer of detached and brutal confidence, Waters wants desperately to curry favor with the white community through the army hierarchy. And he seems to have some strange attitudes regarding members of the African-American race. Waters is enigmatic as he seems both an African-American and yet someone who disowns his race. Waters admonishes and demotes one of his underlings, Private Wilkie, because he had been drunk on guard duty. Not because of the dangerousness and incompetence of the act itself but because he feels it would reflect badly in the eyes of the white officers: "Coloured folks always talking' about what they'll do...if the white man give 'em a chance. You get it, and what do you do with it? You wind up drunk on guard duty." This is an absolutely brilliant film with first-rate acting. Much of the cast, except for Howard Rollins, re-prised their roles from the off-Broadway play including Denzel Washington, the late Adolph Caesar, and the late Larry Riley as C.J. Memphis. (Samuel Jackson actually played one of the roles in the original play but not the film.) The tour-de-force performance by Caesar as Sergeant Waters is one of the great screen performances of the century, in my humble opinion. Not to be missed.

Robert J. Maxwell Someone has murdered the top sergeant of an all-black Army company in the middle of World War II and a lawyer -- a black lawyer, Howard E. Rollins, Jr. -- is sent from Washington to investigate the case. The enlisted men in the Southern camp are all black. The officers are all white except Rollins, who is a captain. They've never seen an African-American officer before. In the face of all kinds of opposition from the other officers, who are either naive or racists, and overcoming the recalcitrance of the enlisted men, Rollins pushes ahead until the culprits are discovered and the case solved.The victim, Adolph Caesar, was the highest-ranking enlisted man who had seen service in France in World War I. Man, is he a complicated person. The men alternatively respect him for his spit-and-polish demands or hate him for his persecution of unsophisticated blacks from the country, the kind who play blues on the guitar and carry around Lucky Tiger balm. Caesar is short and skinny, like the early Frank Sinatra, but he's tough as nails too and is able to clobber a much larger Denzel Washington in a bare-knuckled fist fight. Suspects abound.It's far from a traditional detective story though, and there are scenes of questioning, accompanied by flashbacks, but no climactic courtroom confrontation. In recent cop movies we know right away who the villains are. In the old-fashioned mysteries, Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes or Philip Marlowe keep a tight rein on their judgments until the final reveal. Not here. The cool Rollins takes his job seriously -- too seriously perhaps -- and wants to arrest everyone seriatim upon whom suspicion happens to fall at any given moment -- men and officers alike. And he's always mistaken until the last few minutes when the miscreants give themselves away and spill the beans gratuitously, even in the absence of any evidence against them. I mean, I should say, there is not a "shred" of evidence against them except their confession. (All evidence comes in "shreds".) The movie is never dull but it meanders around, covering baseballs games and combat exercises. Rollins strides manfully and quietly through his part, linking all these various dynamics and ancillary events, but the show belongs to Adolph Caesar as the heart-breakingly torn-up top sergeant who doesn't know which race he owes allegiance to. That coffee-grinder voice! What a performance. He died two years after the movie was released.The location shooting is colorful and evocative. Not just the vast emptiness of Fort Chafee, Arkansas, but the brief glimpses we get of "Tynan, Louisiana," where the summer evenings are so hot and drenched, and the air conditioners so uninvented that people simply move their parlors and floor lamps out onto the sidewalks and fan themselves while playing checkers. Everyone glistens with sweat. Once in a while I thought I smelled body odor.The plot, though, has its weaknesses. Nobody could describe it as taut. That's not necessarily bad. Life itself is rarely taut. But the impression left by the film is not that art is imitating life but that the writer isn't sure where he's going, or how much in the way of drama and significance he can pack into the running time. And none of the white guys are particularly admirable either, though there's plenty of diversity among the black enlisted men. Dennis Lipscomb is the white captain who is Rollins' counterpart. He wants to get the whole thing over with as quickly and quietly as possible. The character redeems himself, but Lipscomb is not a forceful actor but rather the sort who would make a satisfactory clerk, the truculent kind who informs you that the rules preclude his complying with your request.But, as I say, you're very unlikely to get bored. And although the chief conundrum, which has to do with racial identity, is buried beneath a multitude of digressions, it still lends the movie a deathless power. Fortunately, though the problem still exists, it's not as demanding as it once was. At least the now-integrated armed forces have African-American officers, and some have achieved even higher rank.

edwagreen Powerful film detailing the segregation in the armed forces which existed prior to 1948.The gripping film takes place in Louisiana where a black sergeant has been shot to death. A black army official has been sent in from Washington to investigate the murder.Well directed by Norman Jewison who seemed to focus on murder mysteries as he did so well in the 1967 Oscar winning film "In the Heat of the Night."It first appears obvious that the Ku Klux Klan has done the sergeant. (Adolph Caesar in a brilliant Oscar nominated performance for best supporting actor.) Later on the attention drifts to two white soldiers, one of whom, had beaten the sergeant up moments before the shots rang out.Howard E. Rollins, Jr. is effective as the investigator who pulls no punches in his investigation.Flashbacks work beautifully in this film as it is recounted how Caesar was ashamed of "dumb" blacks whom he felt was holding up the progress of the rest of the black people in the army. He provokes one to hit him and thereby he can have him jailed for striking an officer. The sergeant has done this previously in other parts of the country.One black soldier stands up to him and that person is played by Denzel Washington in his first movie. What an impressive performance for Washington!This film was nominated for best picture of 1984 and lost to "Amadeus." That choice of the latter could easily be criticized with this film dealing with segregation, perseverance and doing what was right.