Synopsis
A Soldier's Story (1984) is a sharp military murder mystery you can watch online on iFILM. Directed by Norman Jewison, the film is set on a Louisiana Army base where a Black master sergeant named Waters has been found shot dead — and the case is handed to Captain Davenport, a Black military lawyer flown in from Washington with three days and no allies.
Howard Rollins plays Davenport as a man who knows exactly which walls he's walking into. White officers stonewall him. Frightened Black soldiers won't talk. The base chain of command would rather the whole thing disappear. Through a series of flashbacks, the dead sergeant himself comes into focus — played with chilling authority by Adolph Caesar — and it turns out Waters was a far more complicated, even troubling, figure than anyone wants to admit. An early Denzel Washington appears among the soldiers.
The script came from Charles Fuller's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, and the film picked up three Oscar nominations including Best Picture. What makes it stick is the argument it's actually making: that racism inside a community can be just as destructive as the hatred coming from outside it. Stream A Soldier's Story online on iFILM.
Starring
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