!['Soul Patrol' Review: A Moving, Though Flawed, Account of the First African-American Special Ops Team in Vietnam [Sundance]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/26134822/Sundance-Soul_Patrol-Still_1.jpg "'Soul Patrol' Review: A Moving, Though Flawed, Account of the First African-American Special Ops Team in Vietnam [Sundance]")
A profoundly moving exploration of Vietnam’s first Black spec-ops team, J.M. Harper’s “Soul Patrol” is a fascinating window into a little-known story of military history. Framed around a reunion for all the living soldiers, the film utilizes first-person testimony, archival footage, and reenactments to stitch together the story of how the six-man long-range reconnaissance patrol navigated the racial, social, and cultural changes that were happening in both Vietnam and the United States in the ’60s, all while trying to stay alive.
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Adapted from Ed Emanuel’s 2003 book “Soul Patrol” The Riveting True Story of the First African American LRRP Team in Vietnam,” Harper seems particularly interested in how bonds of combat continue into the present. Cross-cutting between archival footage and the reunion, Harper lets the soldiers guide the narrative, centralizing Emanuel as he tracks recruitment through many of the missions the soldiers faced deep behind enemy lines. Yet, while the archival footage is interesting in its own right, the film really coalesces when all the soldiers are together in the present, recounting their stories, of course, but more importantly, reconnecting and reliving the experiences they all collectively went through. Harper shoots these conversations in stark black-and-white, centralizing the men’s worn faces as they discuss the missions and their friendship.
While the film is at its strongest in those collective moments, the use of staged scenes and reenactments to showcase what footage Harper doesn’t have is really the only major misstep in a film that grooves along to its own idiosyncratic beat. The film begins with a scene of Emanuel shopping at a supermarket, only to be confronted by a Vietnam-era soldier in fatigues while walking down an aisle. Clearly, the past is following Emanuel around, as this heavy-handed visual metaphor hammers home. While that scene eventually gets a late-act payoff, this is one of those stories that perhaps didn’t need such affectations.
When Harper literalizes the specter of history through scenes that ring false, it somewhat undermines the film’s authentic aspects, particularly the clear-eyed storytelling that Emanuel and others can summon. The same goes for the actual Vietnam reenactments, which only serve to visualize what an offscreen narrator is already telling us, anyway. We’ve already seen any number of images of war in Vietnam, without the need to dramatize another jungle shootout.
Much clearer are the vignettes, such as one that traces the etymology of ‘soul patrol’ as a paradoxical term of both endearment and derogation. Or the inclusion of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech “Beyond Vietnam,” as a means of juxtaposing the Vietnamese people and the Black soldiers returning home. Another has the team visiting Bangkok for some rest and relaxation, forcing Emanuel to confront his own prejudices as it relates to the supposed ‘enemy.’
In these moments, “Soul Patrol” underlines the connections and contradictions that emerge during wartime, and how soldiers like Emanuel were ostracized and denigrated upon their return home. Like many Vietnam stories, the film openly contends with the futility of the war, questioning the larger purpose behind it and how it affected these specific men. The film’s greatest strength, then, is in that specificity and its historical corrective. [B]
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