Cadence

Cadence is a 1990 drama set on an American army base in West Germany in 1965. Private Franklin Fairchild Bean, a rebellious young soldier, is given a choice between a court-martial and ninety days in the stockade after a drunken night of tattooing and defiance. He lands in a small military prison run by Master Sergeant Otis V. McKinney, a rigid, bigoted career soldier, where the inmates are a tight-knit group of Black prisoners led by Roosevelt Stokes. Rather than becoming a target of the racial hostility around him, Bean gradually sides with the men against the sergeant's harsh regime.

The film is directed by Martin Sheen, who also wrote the screenplay with Dennis Shryack and appears as McKinney. It stars his son Charlie Sheen as Bean, with Laurence Fishburne as Stokes, and supporting turns from Blu Mankuma, Michael Beach and Harry Stewart. Made in Canada and the United States and released in November 1990, it runs 97 minutes.

On IMDb the film holds a markedly lower score than its audience rating on TMDB, which stands at 6.7 from 113 votes. The gap indicates that viewers responded more warmly to the drama than the twelve critics whose reviews average 4.7.