Cadence is a 1990 American historical prison film directed by Martin Sheen, in which Charlie Sheen plays an inmate in a United States Army military prison in West Germany during the 1960s. Sheen plays alongside his father Martin Sheen and brother Ramon Estevez. The film is based on a novel by Gordon Weaver.
Plot
Set in 1964, Franklin Bean (Charlie Sheen), an Army private, is revealed to have enlisted in the Army because of troubles regarding his behavior at home, and with the influence of his father. He journeys home from his post in West Germany to the States to attend his father's funeral, only being allowed to grieve for a day before having to go back on duty. Deep in grief over his father's death, Bean starts drinking heavily, gets a set of unauthorized tattoos on his hands, and drunkenly assaults a military policeman in a bar. Despite Bean's attempts to try to leave the Army, being fed up with the military life, he is sentenced to 90 days in the post stockade, which is run by Master Sergeant McKinney (Martin Sheen), who takes an instant dislike to the rebellious Bean. McKinney takes issue with Bean's failure to address him as "Sergeant", among other things, and sets to giving him "gigs", known as demerits, for his failures to address him by rank and for lack of proper military appearance. Aware that Bean shows no interest in being subordinate or working as a team, McKinney has him introduced to the rest of the prisoners, a set of African-American soldiers who are all in the stockade for longer periods of sentences for different crimes that they were accused of.
Bean and the men he is quartered with don't seem to get along too well at first. Bean prefers to keep to himself, which some of the other men assume is lack of respect because of their skin color, and he comes to blows with one of them after Bean accuses him of stealing his gold cigarette lighter, a keepsake from his father. Seeing the injuries on Bean the next morning, McKinney demands to know who inflicted those injuries. When Bean refuses to give up the identity of the prisoner responsible, McKinney decides to punish the entire group because of Bean's insubordination. This seems to make the men accept Bean as part of the group and they begin to teach Bean their musical dancing style of marching in their daily cadence. Bean, in addition to working on a field detail with the other men, gets permission to also work repairs on a rundown water irrigation tower, taking pride in his skills in doing so, and his experience from having done the same in his childhood. McKinney takes issue with Bean going above him in the chain of command to secure the permission to do this, and resents Bean to the point where he gets very drunk and starts screaming challenges for Bean to come out of his barracks one night after lights-out and fight him, an incident which doesn't go too well for Sergeant McKinney when the guards recognize him to be drunk.
McKinney tries to get polite with Bean and oversee their differences in a personal conversation with Bean in his office one day. Bean rejects the excuse and tells McKinney that he hates everything that the sergeant stands for, a reply that shakes up McKinney pretty badly. In response, McKinney somehow secures authorization for the irrigation tower that Bean and Pvt. Crane are working repairs on to be considered "off-limits". Bean and the rest of the men defy this order, even their own guards, and successfully complete the repairs of the tower the very next day.Trying to get revenge on the entire group, McKinney drunkenly rouses the prisoners out of bed in the middle of the night, chastises them severely for being out of uniform, including the guard on duty, and after sending the guard away, he orders Bean and the others to do a march through the muddy fields near the repaired, but off-limits irrigation tower. When McKinney starts threatening them with his loaded weapon, Pvt. Crane in the confusion decides to start climbing up the irrigation tower. McKinney opens fire on him with several shots, and despite Bean and the others trying to subdue him, he kills Pvt. Crane with a head shot. Bean and the men mourn over Crane's body in great agony.