A Soldier's Story
A Black military lawyer arrives in a segregated Louisiana Army base to investigate the murder of a Black drill sergeant, uncovering a web of racial tension, fear, and deception in the Jim Crow South.
“Alone, far from home, and far from justice, he has three days to learn the truth about a murder... and the truth is a story you won't forget.”
Synopsis
In a rural town in Louisiana, a black Master Sergeant is found shot to death just outside the local Army base. Military lawyer Captain Davenport, also a black man, is sent from Washington to conduct an investigation. Facing an uncooperative chain of command and fearful black troops, Davenport must battle deceit and prejudice to determine who actually killed the Master Sergeant.
Credits
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How many hands made this film
The scale of the collaboration
Principal cast & crew: 20
These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.
Why a floor?
This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.
Craft leads on file
Edited by Caroline BiggerstaffShot by Russell BoydScored by Herbie HancockDesigned by Walter Scott Herndon
Box Office
1984 · Box office
✅ Made its money back — grossed 3.6× its budget
Why 2.5×?
Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).
Worldwide gross
$21.8M
Opening weekend: $156K — 1% of its US run. It had legs — it kept earning long after opening weekend.
Opening week (7-day): $251K — 1% of its US & Canada run.
Peak 5 theaters
Also known as
- Sergeant Waters - Eine Soldatengeschichtede
- Historia de un soldadoes
- Storia di un soldatoit
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Cast & Crew
20 unique people credited
Top billed cast
Howard E Rollins Jr
as Captain Davenport
Adolph Caesar
as Sergeant Waters
Art Evans
as Private Wilkie
David Alan Grier
as Corporal Cobb
David Harris
as Private Smalls
Dennis Lipscomb
as Captain Taylor
Larry Riley
as C.J. Memphis
Robert Townsend
as Corporal Ellis
Denzel Washington
as Private First Class Peterson
William Allen Young
as Private Henson
Directors
1Writers
1Producers
3Other crew
6Parents Guide
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