YMMV / A Soldier's Story

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Waters was either a Well-Intentioned Extremist who went around punishing black people who conformed to stereotypical behaviour, or was (in Peterson's view) a Neidermeyer who bossed around his own subordinates to look good in front of white people.
• Jerkass Woobie: The unnamed and unseen black soldier that Waters and a group of other soldiers killed. Sure, what he did was ignorant and made him and other Black soldiers look ridiculous, but while it was certainly not good it didn't mean he deserved to be murdered.
• Nightmare Fuel: Not just the subject matter, but the pure, unadulterated hatred that Waters shows in telling the story to Wilkie. This scene alone is what most likely got Waters' actor Adolph Caesar his Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
  Waters: You know the damage one ignorant Negro can do? We were in France in the first war; we'd won decorations. But the white boys had told all them French gals that we had tails. Then they found this ignorant colored soldier, paid him to tie a tail to his ass and run around half-naked, making monkey sounds. Put him on the big round table in the Cafe Napoleon, put a reed in his hand, crown on his head, blanket on his shoulders, and made him eat bananas in front of all them Frenchies. Oh, how the white boys danced that night... passed out leaflets with that boy's picture on it. Called him Moonshine, King of the Monkeys! And when we slit his throat, you know that fool asked us what he had done wrong?
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Robert Townshend plays Corp. Ellis, who is assigned as Davenport's aide-de-camp.
  • This movie was made during the early portion of Denzel Washington's career, before he became a big name star (his first starring role was Carbon Copy from two years earlier).
• The Woobie:
  • C.J. big time. One of the nicest guys in the movie who ends up committing suicide because Waters set him up to be thrown in jail simply because C.J. was being "stereotypical".
  • Smalls, who was present when Peterson was murdered Waters and despite having been surprised by it Is likely to be tried as an accomplice and possibly executed as well given the justice system of the time. His terrified attempts to flee, through the rain, only to be captured by the MP's just before he would have made it, and being brought back to Davenport while quaking with terror, add to it.
  • Wilkie lost the stripes he'd spent years working for to Waters due to a moment of pettiness, was blackmailed into helping him frame CJ with the promise of getting them back, doesn't get them back, and is facing arrest, and the ruination of his career at the end.

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