see, the black race can't afford you no more

On A Soldier's Story:

More than anything, this movie exposes the turmoil within the black race in America. This movie is about a black man murdering another black man, and the cause of this violence is the ignorance and lack of acceptance between blacks. Sgt. Waters is a bad man. He has no tolerance for blacks he believes are reinforcing the old stereotypes, because he believes that they slow down all the forward momentum that the blacks have gained. That does not mean that he deserves to be killed though. And the killing of a man like this only perpetuates a negative mindset like that of the Sergent.

Of course, Sgt. Waters is no better for leading CJ to his suicide. CJ was a singing, baseball playing, "yessah-bossin" as Sgt. Waters put it. Waters did not want him in the military, and didn't even really want him alive because he might set blacks back a few decades. Or at least Waters thinks so. Not only does Sgt. Waters frame CJ for a murder that he did, but that was the real reason for the murder in the first place. He did not plan to advance his race by murdering the white officer, but rather by getting rid of CJ. Perhaps he thought he was killing two birds with one stone, but the point is that Sgt. Waters went to ridiculous lengths to get rid of CJ.

Private Peterson killed Sgt. Waters for what he did to CJ. Sure, what he did was revenge. Not necessarily justified to most people, but he had a purpose. Private Peterson hated Sgt. Waters and was the only man in his brigade to stand up against the ignorant oppression that Waters perpetuates. Someone does need to fight Sgt. Waters, but killing someone is different than fighting them. Fighting people like this shows that the oppression will not be put up with and it gives hope for the oppressed. It demonstrates that Sgt. Waters is wrong. But murder is wrong. Hate to use this cliche, but two wrongs don't make a right. Killing Waters is also black-on-black violence. The message that sends happens to be the exact message that Waters did not want to send about black people. Regardless of what ever motive Peterson may have had, to everyone in the town and everyone else in the military it just looks like things are not changing for the better and that the advancement of blacks is a pipe-dream.

This movie has a couple that has appeared in so many of the movies that I have watched. The black man and the white man working together on a criminal case. It is more subdued in this movie, the focus of the movie is the case itself, but Captain Davenport and Captain Taylor do butt-heads in their efforts to bring justice to the murder case of Sgt. Waters. I accidentally skipped a movie last week, and I decided when I realizes I had skipped it, to just forget about it, because by that time I had already watched too many movies so that it made zero chronological sense for me to go so far back in time. The reappearances of the dynamic duo makes me want to watch a buddy-cop movie now though, it might make an interesting comparison. So I plan to add an undecided buddy-cop movie to the list in replacement of the movie I skipped. Next on the list is Do the Right Thing