Back on my run of watching all the films available on Sky Movies in alphabetical order. The next was "The 24th", a film that I'm assuming went straight to streaming, due to Covid. I wasn't sure what to expect from the story, and my expectations were turned on my head at the start of the third act.
In the early part of the twentieth century, the twenty fourth regiment of the United States Army is not sent to fight in Europe, instead they are building an army training facility on the outskirts of Houston, Texas. The regiment is made entirely of black soldiers, with the exception of the officers. Unfortunately, their uniform does not increase their station in the eyes of many of the surrounding community, and the men face racist abuse outside and within their camp. One night, in 1917, following a particularly grave incident, the situation boils over in tragic circumstances.
I felt this film, whilst with good performances, felt a little "TV movie" to score higher. I suppose what I mean by that is that what I assume was a relatively low budget, didn't stretch to make an entirely convincing military base, rather than just a few tents. I had, perhaps naively, assumed that we were going to see the regiment earn they superiors respect and be sent to the front line, or at least we'd see the films main character, Cpl Boston played by Trai Byers (who also wrote the film) progress somehow. Instead, events take a much darker turn and the actions of the soldiers doesn't feel like (at least within the confines of the story the film tells) a proportional response to what they believed had occurred that night. It was a jarring twist and not entirely believable, given the personalities of the men we'd met thus far, even if it is based on a true story.
I wasn't aware of the Houston riot of 1917 at all. In the last few years it has fallen to films and TV to provide some of those missing history lessons, such as the Tulsa race massacre, that would happen a few years later. Sadly in the century since this happened, situations like this haven't become a thing of the past entirely and the films relevancy is still pointed.
