Butler's Cinema Scene

Trai Byers

“THE 24th” My rating: B+

101 minutes | No MPAA rating:

An overlooked landmark in both black history and military history gets a compassionate/angry examination in “The 24th,” the latest from KC-area filmmaker Kevin Willmott.

The subject is the 1917 “riot” of black soldiers in Houston TX. After months of abuse from  both white citizens and the local police department and fearing they were about to be attacked by a white mob, the soldiers went on a late-night killing spree.  By the time the sun rose 11 civilians, five police officers and four soldiers were dead.

The upshot was the largest murder trial in American history, with 156 soldiers of the Third Battalion of the all-black 24th Infantry facing homicide and mutiny charges.

In capable hands of the Oscar-winning Willmott (“C.S.A.,” “Jayhawkers,” “Destination Planet Negro”…as well as the screenplays for recent Spike Lee efforts) the story of the 24th becomes an intimate epic, filled with suppressed fury and perfectly balancing personal moments against the sweep (one almost wants to say inevitable sweep) of history.

Astoundingly, this is accomplished on a bargain basement budget, with filming limited to less than three weeks.

Yet the movie never looks cheap; neither are its sentiments.

We meet the members of the 24th as they show up to provide security for the building of Camp Logan outside Houston.  There’s a war in Europe, and the men are anxious to prove their worth on the battlefield; the Army, though, cannot see them as anything but uniformed ditch diggers and night watchmen.

Our protagonist is William Boston (Trai Byers, co-writer of the screenplay with Willmott), who as a graduate of the Sorbonne is better educated than any of the white officers calling the shots. This is not lost on the regiment’s commanding officer, Col. Norton (Thomas Haden Church), who unsuccessfully urges Boston to sign up for officer training in Des Moines.

Boston is an idealist out to prove that colored soldiers are second to none; alas, his intellectual interests (in his spare time he reads!) and his light complexion make him suspect, especially to the  perennially angry Pvt. Walker (Mo McRae).

And then there’s Sgt. Hayes (Mykelti Williamson), the scarred black NCO who boasts of charging up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt but has spent the last 20 years in an alcoholic funk  kowtowing to a system that respects none of his sacrifice.  He cannot even look a white officer in the eye; occasionally he takes out his frustrations on his men.

Thomas Haden Church, Trai Byers

The screenplay wastes no time in establishing the limits of a black man — even a uniformed black man — in the Jim Crow South.  The soldiers are routinely harassed and insulted by the white work crews building the camp; one man is literally pissed on. In town the Houston police run a fiercely racist organization and don’t much like having black MPs (Boston is assigned that duty) as colleagues in law enforcement.

The commander played by Church exhibits none of that virulence; he’s proud of his men and has in fact jeopardized his own career by agreeing to lead Negro soldiers. But as he tells a frustrated Boston, there’s not much that can be done against such ingrained systematic prejudice.

One of the great things about “The 24th” is the way in which Willmott and Byers reference and draw from other films about the military experience.  There are whiffs here of “From Here to Eternity” (Boston is this movie’s Pruitt), “Glory” (McRae’s hair-trigger Walker is a first cousin to Denzel Washington’s embittered character) and “A Soldier’s Story” (the self-loathing Sgt. Hayes).

Particularly lovely is a scene in a roadhouse where Boston meets a piano-playing beauty (Aja Naomi King in the Donna Reed role). They bond over the bluesy stylings of Eubie Blake and soon take to the dance floor; it’s reminiscent of an old John Ford film in the way it appreciates how music and movement bring  a community together.

Throughout, “The 24th” accepts the humanity of all its participants — even the villains. Among the black soldiers there is a wide diversity of sentiment and experiences; most of  the principal characters, black or white, are given enough subtle shadings — even back stories — to provide a sense of where they’ve come from.

When the violence finally bursts it is chaotic and ruthless, a volcanic venting of pent-up frustrations and hatreds.

“Ain’t nobody innocent here,” says Sgt. Hayes, who unlocks the arsenal to arm his men for the rampage. “Not them. Not us. Nobody.”

On occasion the dialogue seems a bit too modern and/or declamatory.  When a white thug declares that it’s time “to get our goddam country back” one instantly understands that the filmmakers are taunting today’s Trumpish jingoism.

Still, those moments when “The 24th” overplays its hand are a conscious choice to make the film appealing to modern sensibilities. You cannot say they do not work.

| Robert W. Butler